my boss isn’t doing her job, employee is freezing us out since they didn’t get promoted, and more

by Alison Green on April 6, 2026

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

1. My boss isn’t doing her job and things are falling apart

I work for an accounting firm where I am the only full-time employee to my boss, Katie. She inherited the business from her father and is within a few years of retiring. I am looking to leave this job this year but until I am able to, I am having trouble dealing with a lot of issues she is having.

We are in the middle of tax season and she is falling so far behind on processing tax returns. Many clients have called to ask the status of their return, and I have had to stretch the truth of their status so they do not get upset at me. I always inform my boss when they call. Sometimes that makes her actually work on a client’s return, but other times she doesn’t care.

She has missed several meetings with clients due to personal matters. So far, all of the clients have been understanding but I am worried that she is going to do this to a client who is not so understanding.

Katie is also dealing with a lot of issues at home, and these issues are bleeding into how much time she dedicates to work. She takes a lot of personal calls from family and that interrupts her work and my ability to get some of my work done. A good chunk of my work has to go through her first, and it feels impossible to complete when she is preoccupied. Until I am able to find a better position, what can I do to manage the lack of commitment and support from her?

You’ve got to get really clear in your own head about what you can and can’t control — and what is and isn’t in your purview.

If clients are upset with Katie, that’s Katie’s responsibility — not yours. If Katie is behind on her work, that’s also her responsibility; it’s not something you’re responsible for fixing, and it’s not something you can fix. You should stop stretching the truth when clients call to check on their returns; that’s putting yourself in the middle of Katie’s mess in a way that you shouldn’t. Instead, tell them you’ll let Katie know they called and she will get back to them. (Or if it’s your job to update them on the status of their returns, give an honest update; if they’re upset about that, they can speak to Katie.) Don’t lie on Katie’s behalf.

If Katie’s lack of focus means you can’t complete your own work, just keep proactively updating her about what you need — “I can’t move any further on XYZ until we talk about ABC, and we need to do that by tomorrow or we risk needing to file for an extension,” etc. From there, it’s up to her — this is her business, she’s in charge, and you can’t cajole her into doing her job. Your responsibility is just to do yours and to be proactive about making sure she knows where work stands and what deadlines are in danger of being missed. After that, it’s in her court.

2. Employee is freezing us out since we rejected them for a promotion

A committee of a few managers interviewed an internal candidate for a job in another department. We ended up not offering them the job, and they asked for feedback and why they didn’t get it. I was very polite and warm about it and assured them this was nothing personal. I gave examples of questions they could have answered better and some that they did answer very well.

Ever since the interview, this staff member has been cold to each of the committee members. They ignore us when we say hello or have audible grunts like they are annoyed we’re speaking to them. They are speaking to other staff members, and I see them smiling and in a good mood. How should I approach this as it’s becoming increasingly difficult to work with this person?

Their manager needs to talk with them, so you should talk to their manager. Explain that they appear to be freezing out everyone on the hiring committee since the rejection, and be specific about what you’ve been observing. They don’t need to be bubbly and chatty with you, but they do need to remain civil and professional (which includes returning greetings, being appropriately responsive, and not sounding obviously annoyed when you speak to them).

Their manager should make that clear to them, and should also point out that if they want to be considered for a promotion again, this behavior is the exact wrong way to respond to an internal rejection.

3. When should I ask my boss about relocating?

I decided back in December that this summer when my lease is up, I will move to the next state over to be closer to family. It is a state where my company already has employees (though located around a specific city I will not be near and in a completely different department than what I do — think graphic design vs payroll management) and I currently work hybrid (two days per week on-site with clients and three remote).

I am trying to figure out when to approach my manager about staying with the company and working fully remote from the new state (none of the clients our department of the company works with are located in that state). I am 80% sure they will not have a problem with it, but on the off chance they say no, I will have to look for a new job. (I have been looking already, just in case, but not having any luck landing interviews).

How do I time the conversation with my manager? I want to approach them early enough to have time to secure an apartment in the new state (being able to prove to a new landlord my continuing employment/salary), but not so early that if they say no I could end up out of a job too soon (I absolutely believe they would find a reason to let me go if I “was leaving soon anyway”). Ideally, I would have confirmation from my manager that I can keep my job by mid-May so I can plan a weekend trip to the new state to tour and apply for an apartment before I provide the required 60-day notice to my current landlord that I am not renewing my lease. Do I wait until the last minute and then tell them I need an answer right away? Do I give them a bit more time so they can think about it/discuss with the management/HR team? Or do I just ramp up the applications and hope to find a new fully remote role soon?

I don’t think you’re going to be able to time this the way you want. First, while you obviously know the situation better than I do, I’m more skeptical than you are that they’ll agree to this; you’re proposing going from working in-person with clients two days per week down to zero days of in-person client work. For most employers, that would be a significant change. Maybe they value you enough to want to make it work regardless, but just based on that set of facts, I’d assume there’s a pretty good chance they’ll say no.

And since if their answer is no and you think they’ll let you go if they know you’re planning to leave fairly soon, this gets a lot riskier. Your best bet is to raise it as something that’s still just a possibility — not as “I am planning on moving this summer; can I work remotely?” but as “Would it ever be possible for me move to full-time remote work from Colorado? I have family there and would love to join them, but I love my job and would rather not leave it.” But then you also can’t wait until the last minute and say you need an immediate answer.

Plus, if you’re relying on them saying yes in order to be able to rent an apartment in the new state, that’s additionally risky. If they say no, will you be able to rent regardless? If yes, it’s safer to just move forward without their involvement. (And if not, you have a different problem.)

All of which is to say, assume you’ll need a new job in the new state. If your company ends up coming through with a yes, great — but plan for a no so the thing whole doesn’t fall apart if that happens.

Related:
my boss won’t let me move to another state — but I’m remote

4. My male new hire is being paid more than my female hire

I just started a new job at the beginning of the year, and my team’s been great. Great manager, great peers, and my direct reports are on top of things and really good. Yay!

We’re so busy that we’re adding a few new people to my team. Everyone has exactly the same role and title, and so will they. This recruiting was started before I joined, so I’ve been involved but my manager has been the one running it. He made it clear that HR will handle everything regarding salary; we only learn about the new hires’ salaries at the end after they accept their offers.

Two of the new team members have been hired, and I learned today that there’s a 2% discrepancy in their pay. One is a woman who has 15 years’ experience and a graduate degree. The other is a man with just under 10 years’ experience and a bachelors. I probably don’t need to tell you who’s going to make more.

I’m so new myself that I’m afraid of making waves, but this sits horribly wrong with me. What can I do here?

Approach it from the perspective of legal liability for the company, because it is one: “I’m concerned that these different pay rates will run afoul of the Equal Pay Act. We’re required by federal law to pay men and women equally for the same work, unless the difference is due to seniority or a merit system. Jane is coming in with more experience and a higher degree but being paid less than Jonah. Can we talk to HR about raising her pay to match his?”

Related:
what to do if you’re being paid less than a male coworker

5. Meal break waivers

I work for a large technical staffing agency as a non-exempt employee. State law (Minnesota) now requires an employer to allow an employee an unpaid meal break. It does not not require I take one, yet my employer keeps sending me emails prompting me to sign a “meal break waiver” so I can “choose to waive this unpaid meal break and instead work through your break and be paid for that time.” Why?

Because it’s safer for them to document that you chose to waive the break in case it’s later disputed, since the law leaves it up to you (not them) to decide whether or not you want the break. In fact, the Minnesota Department of Labor website specifically says, “If an employee voluntarily waives their breaks, it is a best practice to confirm this in writing with the employee.”

{ 247 comments }

{ 247 comments… read them below }

  1. Mabby*

    For number 4 you could start by asking why there is a pay discrepancy. If they can’t answer the question suitably then it’s time for the legal liability and what needs to happen to achieve parity.

    1. Cmdrshprd*

      I agree while sexism is a likely explanation, it is possible there is a different legitimate but not obvious explanation to a new person.

      You can have the same role/position/tile that does the “same work” but might focus on different skills that are harder to find.

      Everyone might be a llama groomer, but a llama groomer with experience in French braids is harder to find and paid more. Joe has 10 years as a French braid llama groomer, while Jane has 15 years and graduate degree in the more common lesser paid pony tail llama grooming style.

      In my job everyone has the same title and at the core level does the same work, but when you dig down it is highly unlikely that two people do even 75% of the same thing. They will focus the hire on the area being replaced and future needs at the time. So llame groomer (French braids specialist), llama groomer (pony tail specialist), or llama groomer (updo specialist) etc… But the JDs would almost certainly be identical or 90% similar.

      in my place everyone would be described as having the same role and title.

      2. Spencer Hastings*

        Yeah, and we also don’t know anything about their previous experience other than the number of years. A shorter time at a bigger company, or one that’s a closer fit to the work at the new company, could be more valuable. I don’t think we have enough information in the letter to know whether one of these people should be paid more than the other.

      3. JB (not in Houston)*

        You’re not wrong, but it brings up a study I read about recently. I may be remembering it incorrectly, but it was looking at hiring decisions (I think in a particular field, and I think it was in policing, but I can’t remember) when the two top candidates were a man and a woman, and the study found that in many cases, the decision makers would just happen to decide that an important qualification or experience that the position needed was one that the male candidate had that the female candidate didn’t. For one job opening, maybe the woman had more education and the man had more field experience, and for that job, they decided field experience mattered more. But for the next job, the man had more education and that became the qualification that mattered more.

        What I’m saying, OP, is that if you’re looking at whether the male new hire has a hard to find skill and that’s why he’s being paid more, also look to see whether that’s actually a skill that merits a higher pay.

        1. D'Arcy*

          It’s worth noting that human hiring managers engage in this kind of bias with such consistency that attempts at AI hiring ends up learning to judge candidates based on *completely ridiculous* criteria. That’s not actually the AI being wrong; that’s the AI seeing the absolutely clearcut bias while being forbidden to correlate it with what it actually is, so it finds false cognates that match the bias pattern.

      4. A*

        It doesn’t have to be sexism on the part of the current company—it’s VERY common for men to ask for more and to also be making more. Which is rooted in sexism but basically getting offered less money once reverberates through your entire career

        And yeah the current company can be well intentioned but AFAIK it’s not enough that they not be trying to discriminate, it still matters if the impact is discriminatory so they should look at making it equal

        1. Glitsy Gus*

          Yeah, the answer is very likely “the man negotiated, the woman didn’t.” This is such common social conditioning that is very likely the reason. It is still worth bringing up, and asking for parity for the female worker if they really are doing the same work without any special skills or anything like that, but it isn’t necessarily HR deciding men should make more.

    2. Leenie*

      Hopefully, the LW’s employer will just raise her existing employee’s salary without a big debate. It’s only 2%, so it shouldn’t be a hardship for the employer. It’s actually not unusual for new people to come in at a higher salary than existing employees. New hires are negotiating in the present market and long time employees were hired in a different market and may have just been receiving COLA increases for years.

      As a manager, I’ve had to be proactive about getting longer term employees’ salaries adjusted when new hires come in, so they aren’t paying a penalty for their loyalty. It’s great that the LW is conscious of this, and it’s a perfect time for her to set a precedent of looking out for her direct reports. I’d only raise the legal argument if I got push back from HR. It’s better to make it about basic fairness and employee retention, since that can apply consistently to any existing employees and new hires in the future.

      1. Leenie*

        Sorry – I totally missed that they’re both brand new. That is a legal risk, as well as just being wrong.

      2. Reluctant Mezzo*

        I quit a job for a better one with a new hire coming in making ten cents an hour more than me, with me having lots more experience (both female). Yes, I *was* that petty, and ended up making a lot more elsewhere. :)

    3. Andrew*

      My guess is that men are socialized to behave more aggressively/dominantly, which includes driving harder bargains in things like salary negotiations. Legally, that’s not an excuse as long as there’s someone who is or should be aware of the discrepancy in outcomes (should be the case by default in just about every company below the “multinational mega-corp” level, and I’m sure most of those have data analysts in Finance who can flag the trend for Legal). 2% is actually closer than I’d expect to true parity, though!

      1. On Eagle's Wings*

        >men are socialized to behave more aggressively/dominantly

        Men are also socialized to see women who “behave more aggressively/dominantly” as bitchy. Somehow, this does not end up with women getting raises!

        See also, Shrill Hilary.

      2. swingbattabatta*

        Speaking from experience, I (a woman) am very “aggressive” and “dominant” in my salary negotiations, and my boss (a man) thinks that I am very out of line and behaving very inappropriately. He reacts very negatively to my salary negotiations, while my coworker (a man, with less experience) does not receive that same negative feedback. I have more experience in this very niche industry, I am more efficient, I am the go-to for client communications, and I am certain my male coworker is paid more.

        I’d say the difference is not in whether men are socialized to negotiate better/harder, and more that men are socialized to value other men more.

        2. Andrew*

          I suppose that corollary of my observation (women acting that way are seen as less reasonable than identically-behaved men) COULD do to be called out explicitly!

        3. Hannah Lee*

          Harvard Business School has several studies that have demonstrated that women are often in a lose-lose situation in pay negotiations. If they are less assertive, aggressive in negotiations (conforming to stereotypical female behavioral expectations of ‘nice’ ‘team player’ ‘non-ambitious) they aren’t given promotions, good raises, etc by playing by those expectations. But if they are assertive, aggressive and advocate for themselves the way it’s often expected a man in the same position, they not only don’t get what they are trying to negotiate for, they ALSO get penalized with a backlash for even trying to negotiate, that negatively impacts their compensation, as well as opportunities for advancement, desirable assignments, access to decision makers and reputation.

          Here’s one of them:

          https://www.library.hbs.edu/working-knowledge/salary-negotiations-a-catch-22-for-women

        4. MigraineMonth*

          This! Not only are women in a double-bind in terms of negotiating salary, men are offered higher salaries before negotiations start. Men are just assumed to be more valuable in almost every job.

          1. B’Elanna*

            And God help you if you’re a Black woman, because you may be perceived as “aggressive” and “scary” while sitting quietly with your hands folded and your mouth shut.

          2. Reluctant Mezzo*

            Note how many men newer to nursing end up with the higher paying administrative positions. Just a coincidence! /s

      4. Craig*

        we don’t have negotiation culture in my country but the pay is the pay and men still get more money

  2. BetsCounts*

    as a fellow employee of a CPA firm, I feel for you LW 1!! I will tell you the same thing I tell my staff- we can’t care more than the partner, and we can’t care more than the client. You obvs have more of a partner problem than a client problem, but Allison’s advice about being clear about what you can and can’t control is spot on- the only thing we can control is how we respond to situations, not how others do. Good luck! You have less than 2 weeks left until it’s an August/September problem!

    1. Decima Dewey*

      Remember that getting an extension is an extension to file, not an extension to pay. The taxes are due on April 15th, and Katie is doing the clients a disservice by not getting the returns to the client in a timely manner.

  3. Amanda*

    Interesting on LW1 – I was literally just talking to my friend about some family issues, and she recommended the book “Let Them Theory.” I didn’t read it yet, but from what she described, it seems to address a similar angle as this answer; what you can control and what you can’t control.
    Anyone else read it and felt it helped in this kind of situation?

    1. Dazzling You Too*

      The only thing I know about that book is that the “If Books Could Kill” did an episode on it…

      But I think the advice is good, especially (as someone who did their taxes this weekend, bleh) since the deadline is coming up. Don’t lie for her and don’t sugarcoat it when people ask for a status update, so they can make contingency plans if needed.

        1. Teacher Lady*

          It’s a GOOD episode. For anyone who hasn’t listened, the summary of the book itself is basically “This is a book that could be a bumper sticker,” i.e. there is really no more to the “Let Them” theory than the name would suggest.

          2. LadyVet*

            The explanation of “Let Them.” It started as a poem by Cassie Phillips, and somewhere along the way Mel Robbins claimed it.

    2. Account*

      I’ve read it! It’s not terrible, but it could have been a pamphlet. If someone is acting in ways counter to your preferences, let them. Then, give yourself permission to (“let yourself”) make decisions for your own behavior. There, I saved you $12.99!

      1. AngryOctopus*

        The author spoke at the MA Conference for Women last year–I told my friend that she went over the whole concept so now there were 12,000 of us who didn’t have to buy her book.

        1. fhqwhgads*

          Yeah, in my head I call this category of books the “one-pager plus prove it” genre. The actual thesis of the book can be distilled down to one page of stuff. The other 200 pages of the book are case studies illustrating “person/group/org did the advice, and it went like this”. So, if you trust the source or just want to try the advice based on knowing there were case studies, you only really need a one page summary of what it says. If you don’t believe it without seeing the case studies yourself, read the whole book.

          1. MigraineMonth*

            Which is still better than the “bumper sticker plus repeat it” genre, which takes the kernel of a good idea and beats it into the ground by repeating it for 200 pages with different anecdotes and metaphors but zero actual data or case studies.

            Particularly frustrating with management books that mix up cause and effect (e.g. “great teams trust each other and are vulnerable, therefore we can make teams great by *forcing team members to overshare about past traumatic experiences*”).

    1. MigraineMonth*

      Yes. Thank you for caring!

      I know you don’t want to rock the boat, but as a manager you have a duty to let your organization know about the legal risk of hiring two employees of different genders to the same position and paying the more experienced/educated employee *less*.

  5. Random Academic Cog*

    LW1, on the topic of lying to clients – this is also unfair to them because they have a lot of liability if their taxes aren’t completed on time. They deserve to know if the work isn’t getting done on time so they can make other choices for themselves.

    1. BigLawEx*

      So much this. I once had an accountant who filed an extension without asking. When it got to April 10 or so, they promised it would be done. This subject me, of course, to interest on ‘overdue’ payments. There wasn’t anything I could do by the time I found out, but I was *pissed* because the interest liability wasn’t small and the accountant refused to pay.

      Lying doesn’t give clients the chance to make another choice before the deadline period. I agree with Alison to tell the complete truth so that clients can do something different, though I know the timeline is short if you’re reading the reply 10 days before the deadline in the US and a few weeks for some EU countries.

      1. jack russell terrier*

        Assuming he told you nothing about this, didn’t the accountant pay the interest and penalty?

        My tax guy – whom I’ve been going to for decades – made a mistake and he immediately paid me the interest an penalties.

        In fact, you might even have taken him to small claims court

    2. RIP Pillowfort*

      Yeah. OP I get that you don’t want people to get mad at you. But lying about this is just going to give them a legitimate reason to be mad at you. You’re becoming part of the problem. Where if you let the blame fall at Katie’s feet, you will not be the one caught up in it.

      You might catch some blowback but that’s always a risk when you’re providing services like this.

    3. Texan in Exile*

      That’s the first thing I thought of, too. What if their taxes don’t get filed (well paid) on time? Then they are the ones in trouble, not the boss!

    4. NYWeasel*

      As someone waiting for an update from my accountant who is literally named Katie, this, this 1000x this. I submitted all my paperwork in February and it’s been radio silence since I had confirmation that they knew I dropped off my documents.

    5. MassMatt*

      A tax prep company with a disinterested and distracted owner not doing the work to get taxes done, with a single employee who is hamstrung because they need their boss/owner to do work she isn’t, is not going to be in business for long. And given the tax penalties and interest due for failing to file, the end is going to be ugly.

      OP should get out get out get out while she can. This is going to be a MESS (as in lawsuits and ruined reputations), and it should all fall on the boss. That OP is “stretching the truth” to string clients along could well bite her on the butt.

    6. JustaTech*

      A few years ago my in-laws got a new accountant after their last accountant retired. As part of filing the new accountant went to look at the previous year’s tax return. And discovered the old accountant (Bob) hadn’t filed it. Like, Bob finished the return, he just never hit the “send” button.
      Understandably my in-laws freaked out massively. When they paused to breathe we reminded them that they had been paying their estimated quarterly taxes all year – so the the IRS wasn’t mad (yet) because they *were* paying.
      We also reminded them that million of people file their taxes every year and they could not possilby be the only ones who’s accounant had fallen down on the job (or passed away unexpectedly, or lost their marbles and joined the French Foreign Legion or whatever).
      So the new accounant found the form for “whoops, this didn’t get sent in last year, very sorry!” and then filed that year’s taxes and everything was fine. (And after they calmed down they gave Bob a pass because his entire life had fallen apart and there was no point in shouting at him.)

      But I have to think if they *hadn’t* been paying quarterly estimates it would have been a bigger problem.

      1. Coverage Associate*

        A similar thing happened to me twice with different CPAs. Only once was money owed, and I think that the CPA may have paid the interest and any penalties and the taxes. Well, maybe not the taxes because I would have had to report that on the next year’s tax return, and I didn’t get a 1099.

        In my case, the IRS did catch the issue before I did or my next tax preparer. I just took the IRS notice to the CPA the next business day. The CPA explained that the hourly employee who had done the first draft of my return had a death in the family that tax season. I got the impression that the firm was fixing a lot of issues like mine.

        Friends said that other people would have been incredibly upset, especially because the IRS notice said I owed 10 times the amount I really owed when the CPA looked at everything, but the IRS notice suggested such a big mistake, I knew it couldn’t have been my mistake, so I was annoyed but not really worried.

      2. Freya*

        Here in Australia, our tax office explicitly has the ability to waive interest and penalties if someone comes to them voluntarily and says “oops, I mucked up, here’s the info you need, how do I make it right?” because that’s a LOT less work than chasing people. And chasing people tends to cost more than the interest and penalties are worth.

        1. Alan*

          I don’t think the IRS in the U.S. can legally waive interest but a few years ago I realized that I had understated my income the previous year and they took the change without assessing penalties. The interest they did charge was less than I had made on the money in the meantime :-).

    7. Heffalump*

      I can imagine the LW getting caught between Katie and an angry client on the phone. I’ve had my taxes done for 40+ years by the same accounting firm, with never a hitch.

  6. Lionheart*

    OP4 As someone not in the US, and working on an industry with fixed pay scales (no negotiation), I’ve always struggled with the logic of this.

    I don’t understand how salaries can be flexible / negotiable AND have to be equal across all genders. Surely as soon as salaries are negotiable, this exact scenario happens. And the only way to avoid it seems to be to fix salaries.

    (Not trying to argue against the way it works for you all, but just please help me understand)

    1. AcademiaNut*

      Honestly, you’re right.

      Theoretically, if there are no biases in who negotiates and how negotiations are received, then people who negotiate can get paid more without systematic biases in pay based on race/gender. Practically, there *are* biases in who feels comfortable negotiating, and in how attempts to negotiate are received by the people doing the hiring, so you tend to end up with a situation where, on average, white men are paid more than other people for the same work, without any deliberate attempt to skew things.

      So an employer that negotiates starting salary/raises needs to be proactive in doing periodic reviews comparing compensation across similar jobs, and by being transparent about why one person is paid more than another (i.e., specific skills, raises due to good performance, and not “good vibes” or having negotiated harder).

      1. Lionheart*

        It all seems very complicated to me.
        And I wasn’t even factoring all those things you mentioned.
        Without those systemic issues, it still doesn’t make sense to me. Like, if an African American woman was the one to negotiate, you’d still have a situation where one employee is paid more, just because they asked for it. That would also be illegal. wouldn’t it?

        1. Moose*

          Not necessarily illegal, it depends on why the higher salary was granted. If the candidate demonstrates that she is more qualified and/or her work is more valuable than lower paid employees, a raise is legitimate. If the candidate gets a higher offer just for being a woman, that’s illegal.

        2. AcademiaNut*

          Paying one person more than another for the same work isn’t, by itself, illegal.

          What is illegal is paying one protected class* of people more than another for the same work. So if you do a salary comparison at a company and on average intermediate widget makes are paid more if they’re women than men, it counts as discrimination even if it’s not intentional. A pay discrepancy that doesn’t go along protected class lines might not be fair, but isn’t a legal problem.

        3. MigraineMonth*

          Yes, it is enormously complicated. (Unfortunately, given the number of factors, it’s also not simple to prove.) That’s one of the reasons that pay discrepancies persist and that some organizations see fixed pay scales with no room for negotiation as an equity measure.

          If negotiation is allowed, a company should be committed to frequent “pay reviews” where they check that employees with the same role/experience/education/performance have equal salaries, and bump everyone up to the highest level if they do not. (The Equal Pay law specifies that everyone needs to be bumped *up*, never down.) Since companies usually want to be paying more for experience and management, every time someone new to the role negotiates, giving them a higher salary may mean bumping up the salaries for everyone in that role *and* everyone managing that role.

          I accepted a job for a company that offered me one starting salary and, after I accepted but before I started, increased that salary after a compensation review. That’s likely because I hadn’t negotiated, but others in my new hire cohort had.

      2. Monkeying Around for Money*

        “Theoretically, if there are no biases in who negotiates and how negotiations are received, then people who negotiate can get paid more without systematic biases in pay based on race/gender. Practically, there *are* biases in who feels comfortable negotiating, and in how attempts to negotiate are received by the people doing the hiring….”

        My understanding is that this is where Equality vs Equity comes in. Equity is trying to address these background factors that cause the unequal situation, while Equality just gives everyone the same playing field without considering any systemic background issues.

    2. Moose*

      Equal pay for equal work is an ideal principle that can’t be cleanly applied to situations where employees have large individual variation in skill level, experience, etc. However, if there are significant differences in salary on average across the company according to sex, that’s a red flag. If two individuals of different sexes have equal qualifications and performance metrics but a pay gap, that’s a red flag. To avoid a lawsuit, the law does encourage many employers to compare and adjust salaries on a regular basis, and have measurable performance prerequisites for hiring and promotion.

      Of course, employers can still discriminate on the basis of sex and falsely claim it’s legal because the lower paid person or group is performing worse. That can be challenged in court, but it’s expensive and risky, and has gotten much harder in recent years. The courts have shifted towards the need to prove explicit bias, which is a very tough standard that only cartoonishly sexist employers will meet (though there sadly continues to be plenty of those). Essentially employers are free to discriminate, but courts coach them how to do so discreetly.

      In previous decades, the standard was that any major average pay discrepancy between men and women that could not be explained by performance indicated a systemic problem that the employer was responsible for rectifying, regardless of personal intent. This genuinely did lead to massive transformations in the workforce. So the legal principle of equal pay has a huge range of possible applications in practice, some far more effective than others.

      1. On Eagle's Wings*

        > If two individuals of different sexes have equal qualifications and performance metrics but a pay gap, that’s a red flag.

        If the individual with higher education and more years of experience has a lower pay rate… that’s a giant red flag.

        1. MigraineMonth*

          EXACTLY. Especially when they’re both hired at the same time and don’t yet have any performance metrics.

        2. AngryOctopus*

          I don’t think we have information for that though, just by virute of “well, her degree is higher and she has more experience”. What if the less education/less experienced person also is fluent in business Spanish, and this allows the team to translate business documents which they previously sent out to be translated? This could result in higher pay for the employee because it’s adding a job duty and saving the company time and money.

          My point is that you shouldn’t let these things slide, but that you also might not have all the information that HR does (but they should be able to justify the rates with data).

    3. Radioactive Cyborg Llama*

      If you think about it from a pure economics viewpoint, the job is worth a certain amount of money, obviously subject to a lot of variables. But if the variables don’t exist, and Sven makes more than Elsa, then the job BOTH Sven and Elsa are doing is worth what they’re paying Sven. The willingness to negotiate only disclosed the true value of the labor to the employer.

    4. Parenthesis Guy*

      Basically, myself and another person can have the job of widget maker. But if I build ten widgets an hour and the other person builds seven, then I’m more valuable and should be paid more. That’s why salaries can be flexible. And if you pay us the same, I get pissed off and start doing less work. Why should I build ten widgets if I get paid the same if I build seven?

      So, that’s why people can have different salaries. But if there’s a pattern where all the male widget makers make more than the female ones, then it may be discrimination. This is less likely if there are say five widget makers in the company, and more likely to be the case if there are five thousand. There’s no reason why a qualified male widget maker should be better than a qualified female widget maker. So, if we see that showing up in the data, we can assume its due to discrimination.

      Because many things can’t be as easily quantified as widget making, it means that big companies are more likely to pay a set salary to employees. But again, that incentivizes the truly good widget makers to go elsewhere or do less work.

      1. MigraineMonth*

        Fixed pay scales can still pay more for better performance in several ways.

        A very common one is levels: an L1 widget maker is expected to make 6-8 widgets/hr, while an L2 widget makes is expected to make 9-12 widgets/hr. Once you’ve proved you can consistently make more than 8 widgets, you get promoted to a higher (fixed) pay scale.

        Another is performance pay. Widget makers who receive “meets expectations” by making 7 widgets/hr get their salary, but those who get “exceeds expectations” by making 10 widgets/hr get their salary + 3%.

        Companies may also reward outstanding workers with merit bonuses, company awards with cash prizes, extra PTO, etc.

        1. Reluctant Mezzo*

          Yes! When I was in accounts payable we all knew who was crunching umpty-ump invoices a day and who wasn’t. And yet we were all paid the same. What I should have done was gone to the supervisor and asked for a title differentiation between the two groups, Senior Accounts Payable and just plain Accounts Payable.

  7. Watermelon Frisbee*

    LW 2 – You rejected them because they didn’t answer a couple questions well enough. Did you not ask follow up questions to dig more into their experience? Has their work shown that they can handle a promotion?

    You said that it’s difficult to work with the person now. So it sounds like you do work with them and yet have only considered their interview performance. I would be upset too.

    If you meant they are difficult to work with as in they aren’t being warm to you. Well, the best thing is just act normal and ignore it.

    1. Viette*

      Oh I don’t agree! The employer is within their purview to reject someone for a promotion if they don’t think they’ll do a good job. There’s nothing in the letter that says they only considered the interview and nothing else, just that that was in the feedback given. I think Allison is right! Grunts and refusing to talk to specific people at work is not an appropriate workplace behavior. I don’t think this is a professional response to not getting a promotion at all!

      Even if the employee decided that this was not the place they wanted to stay, it would still not be a good idea to be cold, ignore specific people, and grunt irritatedly at them! Whether or not they are upset, it is still not the way to act at work. If they want to quit and get a job elsewhere, it is still wise to not act this way. Nobody who might be a reference in the future would see this and think, “wow that person is acting professionally about things. That is the socially appropriate way to respond to disappointment.”

    2. Amateur Linguist*

      There may well have been a better candidate. Let’s trust LW2 that they didn’t make the cut and are now behaving badly — people get rejected like this all the time and it’s not fair to assume that the interview was poorly handled by the hiring team.

      1. Confused*

        I am a bit confused by this letter. The title says “freezing us out since we rejected them”, the letter says “ever since the interview”
        The first one would be on the employee, the second more on the managers.

        1. Allonge*

          I am going to guess that ‘since the interview’ was meant to say ‘since they learnt the result of the interview’.

          It may not even be a huge difference timewise; sometimes an obvious no needs no further thinking.

      2. TotsPotato*

        That’s not what Watermelon said though. I don’t see them advocating that the employee should get the job. They are just bringing up the feedback doesn’t sound helpful. But also the LW letter doesn’t make sense.

        If a more qualified candidate got the job, why wasn’t that shared? Why focus on not answering things better? And it’s still not clear if LW is bothered because someone didn’t say hi or if their work is being hindered. I mean I trust the LW to know their circumstances. If LW feels like this doesn’t apply to them, they can just ignore the comment.

        1. Pastor Petty LaBelle*

          So the person is better suited for the next interview. Even if a better qualified candidate got the job this time, answering questions poorly can keep you from being the better qualified candidate next time.

          The person’s reaction is proof enough that the better qualified candidate got the job. Because you do not want someone who pouts when they don’t get what they want in management.

        2. fhqwhgads*

          The only reason to give actual feedback with a rejection is so the internal candidate knows what they can work on to have a better chance next time. Otherwise all they’d need to say to the candidate is “you didn’t get it” and then move on. So it’s context from OP that they did indeed give this person feedback, not just a rejection. Many people would find the feedback more useful than plain rejection, which inherently implies “there’s a better candidate”. No one’s going around saying “we hired the worse candidate”.
          I read as OP included the fact that they gave this candidate feedback to prevent the eventual comments of “did you even tell the candidate why? how can people improve for next time? maybe they’re grumpy cuz they don’t know where the goalposts are” etc.
          So it’s not about “focusing on not answering better”. It’s “they were rejected and given actionable feedback on why”.

    3. Myrin*

      Nothing about “questions they could have answered better” implies that that didn’t also include follow-up questions.

    5. Nodramalama*

      I’m not sure why you’ve decided there was some issue with the interview process. If the person you’re interviewing answers questions badly, you shouldn’t fill in the blanks or help them with their answers just because they work with them. That’s the entire point of an interview.

      1. Watermelon Frisbee*

        No one said they answered badly. Part of the job of an interviewer is to ask proving questions. My company’s interview guide literally has a section to do just that. They have also guided us to probe for clearer answers. If the employee was reasonably good at their job, you should want to probe deeper.

        Interviews make s lot of people nervous so it’s expected that people won’t perform well in them whereas they can do the job well. Keep in mind that this doesn’t mean that he should have gotten the job, but the feedback doesn’t sound like it was good.

        2. Amy*

          Probing for a clearer answer seems rather self-defeating. The goal of an interview isn’t to have them respond with the exact answer you want and then hunt for that answer it you don’t get it.

          It’s should be a view into their thinking and future behavior.

          I don’t want to wind up with an employee who I need to play Socratic Seminar with everytime I need a question answered.

          1. Watermelon Frisbee*

            That is a very odd way to look at it. It’s clear you and other commenters disagree so I’ll stop trying to explain it.

            Interviews are conversations, not quizzes.

            1. Amy*

              A good interview where the candidate the provides well thought out responses with insightful questions can be conversational.

              An interview where the candidate is providing unclear or incomplete answers and where the interviewer feels the need to probe for meaning and clarity is not going to be a real conversation.

              1. Hannah Lee*

                It can certainly be a ‘real’ conversation. I’ve been on both sides of interviews when that has been the case.

                That probing can be the interviewer providing clarifying information on their question (to be sure the candidate hadn’t misunderstood what they were asking), and/or asking for context of the response they just got, or for another example that’s more closely representative of a particular type of situation.
                A simplistic example, interviewer may ask about the candidate’s experience in client management. Candidate may respond about their use of an excellent CRM tool. Interviewer could clarify they were asking about actual interactions, development of the relationship over time. Candidate could respond about a customer relationship they initiated and cultivated over time. And then interviewer could ask about how candidate handled a client, situation when things weren’t going smoothly/there were conflicts/issues that needed to be resolved.

                First clarifying the intent of their question (not ‘what tools did you use?’ but ‘how did you, personally approach and interact in the relationship?’) then following up again to see how the candidate dealt with things when there were issues.

            2. Spiderling*

              Sure, but it’s possible to answer a question badly even with additional clarifications and prompting. And in fact, if that’s the case, it’s a sign that the candidate was unprepared for the interview or they don’t have a good understanding of what the role entails.

              It’s also possible that this person answered the questions fully (with or without extra prompting), but their answers just weren’t what the hiring committee was looking for. For instance, if they described themselves as quiet and introverted when the role involves a lot of in-person socializing with clients, that’s an indication that they aren’t likely to be a great fit. No amount of clarification is going to change that – which doesn’t mean the candidate was bad; just that they’re not a good fit for this particular role.

        3. Washi*

          First of all, I feel like debating whether this candidate *should* have been rejected (which we absolutely do not have enough information to determine!!) is getting away from the question in the letter. The interviewee is not handling an internal rejection and a good faith effort to offer feedback well, it doesn’t matter if the questions were bad or whatever; like Allison said, acting visibly irritated by everyone in the committee is NOT professional or in this person’s own best interest!

          Second, I can definitely think of questions that you could answer badly in a way where no probing could save you! Like if someone asks a “what would you do if…” type of question and the person has a response that’s completely contrary to the company’s values/policies/common sense. Work performance matters, but you can’t completely ignore a poor interview either.

        4. metadata minion*

          I really can’t tell from the information given whether they’re dinging the candidate for just not interviewing terribly well — which as you say is particularly unfair in an internal candidate where you have so much more information about their actual job performance — or if they questions they didn’t answer well were more along the lines of “what would be your top priority for this department?” or “how would you handle this high-level problem?” In the latter case, that could easily show that the person doesn’t have the kind of strategic thinking they’re looking for (or just less of it than another candidate), or that they’re opposed to a major upcoming initiative, or things like that.

          1. Snow Globe*

            Yes, this! My interpretation of the feedback about answers to some questions is that the answers themselves indicated the candidate has some gaps in knowledge or suitability for the job. Of course the committee would consider that, and it’s fair feedback to the candidate that they need to work on those areas.

            1. Amateur Linguist*

              Yeah, my last interview feedback was a few weeks ago and I know I relaxed too much and spoke over the interviewer. I do that in my current job because I was employed as a kind of sheepdog who needed to corral senior people into handing in their work. But the team actually wanted someone who could listen to detailed instructions and have me execute them carefully, and someone who appeared as impulsive as I did might not have that ability to look before she leapt.

              I also used the interview to audition the job and actually, where I fall down a lot in administrative interviews is that I spent 9 years in frontline reception and now 2 1/2 years as my boss’s fixer. I come across as quite enthusiastic but perhaps more outgoing than they need, which is a surprising thing for the arch-introvert in me. I thought I might be a bit bored to be honest.

              So interviews are not only assessing the qualifications before then but the human being themselves. The most qualified candidate might be a twit in person, and someone who might lack a few easily teachable things might show they were quick to pick up on stuff they might not know offhand but could easily research.

              Also professionalism is about owning your own successes and failures. In more senior roles, you handle more of the people things even if you’re looking at team lead or project manager roles. You can’t be openly discourteous to people who rejected you, because you’re only convincing them that you can’t handle failure well, and the more senior you go, the more responsibility you have for failures as well as successes.

          2. Spiderling*

            I agree. Or it could have been a situation like, “This role would be a stretch for Jane, but she’s a high enough performer that we’re willing to give her a shot at an interview.” Maybe her work performance on its own was enough to merit consideration, but not enough to land her the job unless she really blew it out of the water in the interview.

        5. Myrin*

          No one said they answered badly.

          I mean, the letter kinda does, actually:
          “questions they could have answered better”, and you yourself paraphrased it as “not well enough” in your top-level comment.

          Now granted, “could’ve been better” doesn’t necessarily mean “bad”, but I feel like that’s somewhat of a distinction without a difference in this particular case. I actually agree with your points regarding probing questions and interviews being conversations, but like I already said in another reply, I’m not sure where you’re getting that that wasn’t exactly what OP did and the candidate’s answers still weren’t particularly good.

          1. Another One*

            I feel like this gets into the negative of giving feedback. You want to give interview feedback to be helpful but people have to be open to the feedback.

            1. B’Elanna*

              This is why many interviewers at my company don’t give any feedback at all. Too many people see it as an opening to rules lawyer your feedback, not as useful information for their next interview.

              1. MigraineMonth*

                Though sometimes it’s soooo tempting to argue. I had to sit on my hands the time I was rejected for an entry-level role because I “didn’t have enough experience”.

                I had 7 years.

        6. goducks*

          While I agree that it is good to give an interviewee who is missing it on a question a chance to redirect, and to probe a bit… it has been my experience that some interviewees still miss the mark when given that opportunity. Or upon probing, it becomes clear that there’s not much there, there.

          I hyper aware when I’m interviewing of what the experience can feel like in the hotseat, but at some point if you’re not giving me good answers to my question, even after I’ve redirected or probed, I’m moving on and taking that as your answer.

          It’s not clear here that the LW’s committee didn’t do this. They could have, and the internal candidate could have still had less than great answers to a few questions.

      2. Guacamole Bob*

        I’m in government and we have set interview questions and a scoring rubric. We often make sure someone has coached internal candidates a bit beforehand – not on the questions, but on the fact that we can’t use what we know from working with candidates and candidates can’t assume you know things. They have to give full answers that we can take notes on and score (and which would stand up to scrutiny when reviewed by someone who wasn’t there), which can feel a little awkward when you’re talking about projects where you collaborated with the interview panelists.

        In practice, we can ask follow up questions to elicit a bit more when a candidate gives a too-brief answer, but we’ve had internal candidates just not do well and not get the job.

        1. Victoria*

          Exactly the same. I work in a UK university and we also can’t take into account what we know of the person, because we have to be able to score them.

    6. Allonge*

      That is how interviews work though; you need to demonstrate that you are able to answer questions related to the job. Just because you work at this place already does not mean the hiring manager knows all about you!

      Answers can further demonstrate you are clueless about a specific aspect that is relevant for the new job but may not be for your current one; whether you are ready to have a higher level or responsibility or to manage other people’s work. None of this may be clear from your existing record.

      1. SunshineKittens*

        Did you mean to answer someone else? Sounds like this poster understands what an interview is and is giving excellent advice on interviewing and giving feedback.

        Even though it doesn’t help the OP for this case, OP can use it for the next interviews. I feel that OP should ignore the behavior too. Report it to the employee’s manager to get it handled, but don’t let people’s behavior change your own.

            1. Another One*

              If they asked for feedback on why they didn’t get the role, yes.

              Though, I acknowledge it’s possible that for internal employees the policy is everyone who gets an interview gets an in person rejection with feedback. I’m not sure I’d want that, but I feel like a lot of people here have commented things along the lines of preferring that.

              1. I'm Just Here for the Cats!!*

                I’m wondering if there was miscommunication. Like the employee wanted feedback on why he didn’t get the job, but he just asked “is there any feedback from my interview you can give me?” and the OP took that to mean he wanted feedback on his interview and how he could improve

                1. Amateur Linguist*

                  That’s splitting hairs. They gave feedback, the employee has taken it badly, it’s her problem, not OP’s

                  We’ve totally been in the employee’s position, so I can empathise, but treating the very people who might look at you more closely next time with contempt is just bad and not in any way a failing of LW2’s interview style.

        2. Spiderling*

          The letter doesn’t say (or even imply) anything about LW’s interviewing skills. All we know is that some of the candidate’s answers were less than satisfactory (which can happen no matter how well the questions are phrased or how many follow-up questions are asked), and that LW provided feedback when requested. We don’t know what questions they asked in the interview, or what the candidate’s answers were, or whether interview performance was the only factor they considered. We DO know that the candidate’s reaction was inappropriate and unprofessional, so I don’t get why we’re giving LW advice on how to be a better interviewer.

        3. Allonge*

          My point was that interviews are not like questions in school where a teacher will do their best to get you to finally get to the correct answer. The interviewer wants to know if you know [thing] or how you would handle [situation] and make choices based on that.

          If someone is asked why llamas should be groomed from the front and, despite the company’s website saying ‘we always groom llamas from the front’, the applicant answers actually they should be groomed from the middle, it’s not the job of the interviewer to keep asking probing questions until they see the light. Same on soft skills: there are wrong answers or wrong-for-this-job answers and the interviewer has no obligation to teach while interviewing.

    7. RIP Pillowfort*

      This attitude is pretty unfair. It could very well be that the person is not suited for the role they interviewed and botched the interview badly. And I’ve been on many interviews where the deciding factor was 100% how they handled the interview because they were equally good candidates.

      Also sure you can be upset. You don’t get to ignore your managers or grunt at them audibly if you’re upset about not getting an internal position. You are expected to manage your emotions and behave professionally.

    8. Andrew*

      My take is that while the employee obviously needs to change their behavior regardless, how reasonable the reaction is depends heavily on some very subjective factors that may include mistaken assumptions by said employee.

      We’ve seen a number of letters about deliberate snubs or walked-back promises, and both Alison and the majority of commentators say “Leave. Now.” On the other hand, we’ve also had plenty of stories of wildly disproportionate reactions by employees who vastly overestimated their performance or their chances of landing a project/promotion. (LW #2 seems to believe this is on the latter end of the spectrum, to the extent they’ve addressed it, admittedly.)

    9. I'm Just Here for the Cats!!*

      we don’t know if that was the reason, the questions were just the feedback they gave the employee. They were probably saying “You could have answered this question better.” They did not say why the employee was not chosen.

    10. Radioactive Cyborg Llama*

      Not acting warm and not being civil are different things. And yes, it’s difficult to work with someone who responds to you with audible grunts. Being butthurt about being passed over for a promotion does not justify acting like an ass. And IME, that behavior correlates at a high rate with a sense of entitlement, like they’re entitle to be promoted because they’ve been around for X years and done decent enough work. (I’ve also witnessed this behavior exclusively in men FWWI).

      2. B’Elanna*

        It’s also bad for the rejected employee. If I was a colleague of the person, and I saw them acting this way over not getting a promotion, I’d think the interviewers made a wise choice. That goes double if the new position involved management duties.

        1. allathian*

          Yes! All this sort of behavior does is prove conclusively that the person is entitled and the interviewers were right to pick someone else.

          People are human so I do think that it’s okay to show some disappointment that you didn’t get the job you wanted, but being petulant about it is not the way to go.

          I think that pulling back on social chat is fine as long as you do the bare minimum, as in greet someone civilly who greets you and don’t act like they’re invisible when you pass them in the hallway. It should go without saying that obstructing their work is not OK even if you don’t want to go above and beyond for them.

          But there’s a statute of limitations on this, too, especially if you’re a generally warm person at work. When the acute feeling of disappointment has passed you need to let it go and treat the hiring committee as you would anyone else, carrying a grudge’s not a good look. No need to pretend you’re friends or even work friends, but an outsider who doesn’t know your history shouldn’t be able to tell you have a history with this person.

          And whatever you do, don’t take out your disappointment on the person who got the job you wanted.

      3. Orion's Belt*

        I don’t think anyone is saying the actions are appropriate. Sounds like maybe the feedback wasn’t great?

        1. Jennifer Strange*

          Sounds like maybe the feedback wasn’t great?

          Based on what? The feedback as the LW has written is sounds perfectly valid.

    11. Spiderling*

      I mean, it very well might have come down to interview performance. Maybe the winning candidate was equally qualified on paper, so the interview had to be the deciding factor. Or maybe the role involved responsibilities that don’t typically come up in the candidate’s current role, so they had to rely on their interview answers rather than past performance.

      It’s entirely possible (likely, even) that the candidate was fully qualified for this promotion and would have done well in the role. But at the end of the day, being qualified is never a guarantee that you’ll be offered the job. When you have more qualified applicants than there are open positions, you’re going to have to reject some qualified people – and sometimes it has to come down to seemingly minor factors.

    12. Tiger Snake*

      We could also ask why the interviewee didn’t probe for more detail about what the interview panel was asking about, failed to read the room or take initiative. All of which are skills you’d want to see as someone moves up the chain into management.

      If you assume failure instead of simply “they weren’t the best candidate”, there’s more than enough blame to share, but the bigger helping is going to call on the candidate and not the company – the interview panel is not there to help the candidate, they are there to make an impartial judgement over who the best candidate is.
      If you’re given the opportunity to sell that you are that person, it is on you to make the pitch. A company can take the internal candidate to water, but they can’t make them drink.

  8. Nobby Nobbs*

    Ugh, number 5 is WHY it’s such a bad idea to allow employees to waive their employment rights. The second the state lets you waive your legally guaranteed break employers start laying on the pressure and it stops being guaranteed.

    1. WS*

      Yeah, I’m in Australia and we had one employee who would rather have skipped her mandated lunch break and gone home earlier, but we had no leeway since she worked more than 5 consecutive hours. Annoying for her, but I understand the larger picture. She could skip the non-mandated breaks that were in her award, though.

    2. DJ Abbott*

      Employers will do anything. They’d have all of us working 24/7 with no pay at all if they could get away with it. :(

    3. Sarah*

      I got the impression that the LW doesn’t want to take a lunch break. They were just curious why the employer wanted them to document that they were choosing to do that.

      I did not read it as the employer was forcing them to work through lunch and make it sound voluntary.

      Lots of people choose not to take an unpaid lunch if they’re able to leave earlier as a result. My husband did that at a past employer that allowed it – he was more than happy to get out of there a half hour early instead of taking a forced break in the middle of the day.

      I always take my lunch breaks, because I usually needed the mental break to destress. (But he and I work very different industries – I’m in healthcare and he was in a relatively low-stress corporate job.)

      1. Alsoan*

        I’m not sure OP understands the problem from the employer’s side … the thing they’re worried about, OP, is that you’ll later claim they wouldn’t let you take the breaks / made it impossible for you to do so, and try to sue them for back pay. So IIRC they want to have the waiver signed by you to prove this wasn’t the case if that ever happened.

        1. fhqwhgads*

          Indeed, although one could also argue one was coerced into waiving it, so then it’s still kind of a quagmire.

      2. Great Frogs of Literature*

        Massachusetts has a similar law, and when I was hourly, we were all encouraged to sign a waiver so that we didn’t have to TRACK our lunch break. I felt very weird about signing away my legal rights on my first day of work, but my senior colleague assured me that it was very normal, most people had signed the waiver, no one was expected to work through lunch, and I could always retract the waiver if it was a problem.

        So I signed, and he was in fact right — I always got my lunch break, usually at noon (rarely something would run long or scheduling would otherwise be complicated), and it was much easier to just be able to say on my timesheet that I’d worked 8 hours.

        My read on this letter is also that the employer isn’t pressuring the employee to not take lunch, but rather to officially document that they are choosing to not have an official break. It’s a CYA move, not an asshole employer move.

    4. Amy*

      If an unpaid lunch break forces me to leave later, I don’t see it as a perk. I’d rather not have one and leave at 4:30.

      1. Alsoan*

        I always felt that way too. I understand a break would probably help me produce better work … in which case I feel it should be paid. And at least in the last job I had, there was nothing nearby so you could like, stand in the parking lot for 15 minutes unpaid – yay!

      2. spiriferida*

        The thing you have to keep in mind is that when it comes to most employers, they won’t actually want to let you leave the hour/half hour early… they’d just want to have you work a full 8 hours.

        1. Butterfly Counter*

          Well, yes. But you’re still working the full 8 hours. You just have to be *at* work for 8 1/2.

          I hated this because I started work at 7:30 and had to take a full hour unpaid lunch. So rather than leave at 3:30, when traffic was still manageable, I had to take the unpaid hour just hanging around doing nothing (I’m a fast eater), then leave at 4:30, when traffic was Horrible, usually adding yet another 30-60 minutes to my home commute. So not only was my work day extended an hour, but I often got home as much as 2 hours later than if I had been able to leave at 3:30.

        2. Amy*

          Yes, a full 8 hours or a full 8.5 hours with an unpaid lunch break in the middle.

          I’d rather just be there 8

    5. bripops*

      When I worked an hourly job in Virginia there was no right to breaks, paid or unpaid (not sure if this has changed since then), but corporate still made us fill out a waiver if we didn’t clock out for lunch because they had an internal policy of mandatory breaks

      it was a national company that isn’t exactly known for caring about employee wellbeing so I have a feeling this was more about having a unified policy for everyone to stay compliant with rather than risking getting in trouble with the states where it was required

    6. I'm Just Here for the Cats!!*

      yeah, i’m confused by the waiver. Like what if you change your mind? Or like sometimes you want to work but other times you need that 30 minutes to go to the bank.

      1. Strive to Excel*

        From OP’s phrasing I took it as a waiver/day situation; ie, they’re not signing a waiver for all of their breaks forever, they sign it on days where they specifically don’t want to take an unpaid lunch break.

    8. Chirpy*

      My department head only takes one of her paid breaks (we get 2 for an 8+ hour day), and seems to think that because they’re paid breaks, it shouldn’t matter if we get them or not, and seems to think me taking both breaks is somehow “lazy.”

      The breaks are paid by law. If my boss wasn’t letting us take them, he’d get in trouble – but we can choose to skip them apparently.

      So annoyingly, that means despite me doing much better and being more productive if I get both breaks (the job is pretty physical and I have issues being on my feet nonstop), I have a lot of pressure to only take one break.

    9. earlthesachem*

      I live and work in Minnesota. Generally we are one of the ‘good’ states when it comes to this kind of stuff.

      I have to confirm when I punch out at the end of my sift that ‘Yes, I did take my 30-minute meal break’ or ‘No, I did not take my 30-minute meal break’. Once I do that my punch is confirmed. Pretty much all of us are in agreement that it’s mostly a small, annoying extra step we have to take when all we want to do it go home.

  9. DB*

    LW2 – I would try to get the staff member’s feedback to the feedback. That might get LW2 some answers on why the staff member has been “cold” to the committee members.

    1. Nodramalama*

      I don’t think it really matters what the feedback on the feedback is, which is obviously negative. You can’t act cold and blank people you work with.

      1. People being people is complicated (anon)*

        If it’s “shame and stuffing down hot tears” that’s a different issue (and different path forward) than “resenting having been led by someone to believe she was a shoe-in” which is again different from “I can’t respect people who didn’t understand the genius of my answers.” There’s also, “I feel like every kind hello is mockery,” “I feel like every kind hello is pity,” “I’m questioning everything I thought I knew about reading people, because I felt like I aced the interview,” “I’m seething with rage that people who are demonstrably weak at skill X, rejected me for inadequate skill X.”

        Some are well within development / coaching boundaries. Some are way beyond the purview of coaching. Some are a workplace confrontation in the making. I’d want to get a read on which of them are in play.

        1. sb51*

          But no matter which it is, it’s probably best that their manager, rather than the interviewer for the other position, is the one to probe.

          I’d add “doesn’t have a good script for professional rejection, only ones for personal rejection, and with “asked someone out on a date (or even to do one-on-one friend things vs large-group-friend-things) and they said no” scenarios, you’re supposed to give the other person a lot of space in mutual friend groups to not look stalker-y/unable to take a no, but in professional situations you’re not supposed to back off that much.

          1. Spencer Hastings*

            A lot of scripts that are much more applicable to this are ones we learned as children. Didn’t get the lead role in the school play? Do your best in your minor role and have a positive attitude! Coach put you in left field when you wanted to be pitcher? Be the best dang left fielder you can be! Get a bad grade on a test? Ask for help on what you don’t understand so you can do better in the future! In all of these cases, sulking or throwing a tantrum can only make it worse.

            1. Amateur Linguist*

              Yeah, I was literally in the ‘didn’t get the part in the school play’ — I was initially chosen (ironically because I could play-act sulking well — it was Edmund in The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe in an all-girls school!) but got demoted when someone came back from being sick and asked to audition.

              She was a much better Edmund than I’d have been and I can play-act well, but I’m not really good at learning and delivering a lot of lines, so I suspect I would have been operating beyond my personal limits. I was Second Wolf, had one line, and the real fur hat my mum and dad brought back from an exchange trip to Russia stole the show so much that I kept the costume together and wore it at pageants the whole summer. I had the satisfaction of getting back at the teacher who snarked at us as we left school for the day by beating him in the costume contest.

              So I got the booby prize, created my first fur suit (don’t worry, the other bits were fake fur, I promise!) and fursona and found out that I was indeed a furry long before furries were mainstream. As one door closes, so another opens.

          2. Hannah Lee*

            I don’t see that much of a difference in the ‘back off’ advice of those 2 scenarios.

            In both cases it comes down to ‘don’t hover and ask for a do over, don’t hound them for an explanation of why not you, don’t take it personally, and try to maintain a neutral polite disposition, relationship … continue interacting with them as needed as close to how you always did before the rejection.

            There’d be a caveat on that last one if your personal relationship had been getting closer as you anticipated asking them out, or if you’d gotten more involved in the tasks/department you’d be involved in if you gotten the promotion in anticipation of the new job. In both those cases you’d back off your behavior a bit more. But in neither case would being “cold to each of the committee members. … (ignoring them) when we say hello or (having) audible grunts like they are annoyed we’re speaking to them” be acceptable behavior, personally OR professionally.

  10. Chad H.*

    LW5.

    Take your lunch break. Your body, your brain, and if you work with screens, your eyes need the break.

    1. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

      Or we could let each individual decide what works best for them, which is the purpose of being able to choose to skip the unpaid break.

      1. A. Lab Rabbit*

        Yes, this. I prefer to work through my lunch to get done with my day sooner.

        Also, I’m hypoglycemic so many small meals throughout the day work better than one large meal in the middle, which tends to make me drowsy.

  11. DJ Abbott*

    #3, when I wanted to move in 2021 while unemployed, a relative co-signed my lease. Could one of your relatives co-sign a lease for you? Or, could you just stay with relatives until you get a job and an apartment?
    Co-signing means if you couldn’t pay the rent, the co-signer would be responsible for paying it. If you have savings or a temp job or something to pay the rent, that should work. I was on the federal employment during the pandemic and working part-time, so I didn’t have trouble.
    It’s nice that you’re taking care of your life by moving to a place you want to live. Good luck!

    1. Texan in Exile*

      (I would have to trust and love someone an awful lot to co-sign a lease. I didn’t even co-sign for my lovely cousin because she had a roommate and I didn’t know the roommate and didn’t want to be on the hook for her.)

      1. Another One*

        I’ve had family members co-sign for me, but it was my parents or my grandmother. People, who at the time, were actively helping with my rent.

        I know people, who were able to have other family members cosign, but it was always a bigger push. A friend was able to have an uncle cosign once or twice, but it was made clear that it was a big ask.

        Some landlords will accept professional/corporate cosigner. There are additional costs associated with that type of cosigner, but it can be an option. (Apparently, it can be a necessity for international students because they won’t have a family member in the US, who qualifies as a cosigner.)

      2. DJ Abbott*

        Yes it all depends on the relationship, family dynamics, and the renter’s track record. Not something everyone can do. It might be better if LW could just stay with relatives.
        My brother helped me financially once before, 20 years ago, and I paid him back. One of the dynamics in our current relationship is he didn’t help with the abuse growing up and wants to help now. At both times he had a good job and savings, so he could swing it.
        When he co-signed I had enough coming in from unemployment comp and a part-time job, and he knew he would only have to pay if something happened to prevent me.

    2. Hlao-roo*

      Just throwing out a few other options in case the LW’s preferred timing for finding a new job/giving notice on the current lease/finding a new apartment doesn’t work out:

      – if your current landlord offers a month-to-month option at the end of your lease (usually for a slightly higher rent when it is an option), you could switch to month-to-month so you have more flexibility in your timing (especially if you can’t go remote with your current job and need to job search in New State)

      – if the weekend apartment-hunting trip doesn’t work out, would your relatives be willing to apartment-hunt with/for you? I made a long-distance move once where I looked up apartments that met my requirements online, then sent those listings to near-by relatives who toured them to make sure they were OK, and that strategy worked out well for me

      – if you need to move to New State before you can find an apartment you like (and staying with relatives while apartment-hunting isn’t an option), you can look for long-term/extended-stay hotels to live in while apartment-hunting (and/or job-hunting)

      – similarly, you could also look for month-long Airbnb stays that are within your budget and live there for a month or two while look for an apartment (and/or job)

      1. I'm Just Here for the Cats!!*

        Going off your 2nd point, could a relative face-time you as they tour the apartment. Or is there a real estate type of company who would do this for you.

      2. EmmaPoet*

        Re point 2- I did this for a friend years ago and it worked out pretty well for her. She was doing a sabbatical in DC and looking for a sublet through an academic site. I would go to the places and look at them and say, “The apartment is really nice but you’d have five roommates” or “There is no easy bus/metro access so you’ll be walking half a mile to an unsheltered bus stop.” (Half a mile in a DC rainstorm/summer heat is miserable.) I finished touring one and called her immediately saying, “This is your best option by far and they allow dogs.” She was bringing her little dog with her, so that was vital.

      3. LW#3*

        My current landlord stopped offering month-to-month a year or so ago. I have been here six years, so they may offer me that option if I ask. Otherwise I am thinking put stuff in storage and rent a room in current state month-to-month while job hunting until I can give notice.

        1. Hlao-roo*

          That sounds like a good plan, and I hope you’re able to pull of your move to New State without too much hassle!

    3. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

      that’s a huge ask. I can’t think of literally anybody I’d cosign a lease for.

      2. Bathyphysa Conifera*

        Did it for several young relatives (college student, or new graduate in a city with high demand) and it worked out just as you would want it to: Hassle of paperwork but young person handled everything and always paid the rent themselves, on time. We knew we would be on the hook for that rent if something really terrible happened, like they were hit by a truck and couldn’t work.

        Did it once, very reluctantly, for a middle-aged relative with a history of mooching but surely, surely they understood that this was a one-off to get them over the hump of waiting on a lump sum to come in, a sum which would more than cover the rent for the year, so to help them get on their feet we would do this… and oopsie doodles three months later all the money had vanished, no way to have foreseen that.

        Co-signing is a very big ask.

        1. Hannah Lee*

          We have a saying in my family when stuff like this happens with certain relatives:

          “always disappointing … never surprising”

      3. Starbuck*

        My parents did it for me when I was in college, luckily. I can’t imagine doing it for anyone else either.

    4. Mad Scientist*

      If OP can confidently afford to rent even if they lose their current job, then another option would be to simply apply for apartments using their current employer as proof of income. Landlords generally only need that proof at the beginning of a lease. They wouldn’t necessarily be notified if OP lost their job and had to get a new one. Of course, depending on how they verify employment, this could tip off OP’s boss that they’re thinking of moving. But some landlords only want to see recent pay stubs and don’t even bother contacting your employer.

      1. LW#3*

        I thought of just securing an apartment with current paystubs, however one apartment complex I spoke with said they would require verification from the employer that I still have the job. Too risky to tip off my manager I am looking to move so soon.

    5. LW#3*

      My Mother has said that worst-case scenario I could live with her & my step-father while job hunting. They really want me to be able to move out there. If I was at least interviewing and had possible job offers, I would do that short-term. Would not want to ‘wear out my welcome’ :)

      I would not ask anyone to take the risk of co-signing with me, as if it would take more than a few weeks to find a job they would be on the hook.

  12. 653-CXK*

    OP#1: I can replace boss with a third company.

    The third party that cuts checks for our providers on our behalf switched from one check-paying company to another (think paper checks and EFTs) and the providers have been demanding where their payments are. What I have been doing directing them to the third party source and cheerfully stating, “here’s my contact at the agency; they will be able to help you out.”

    Initially I thought, “this is passing the buck, I should be doing more than this” but then as I read OP#1’s letter, I said to myself, “This is not a me problem, it’s a them problem; it’s the third party that has to step up and fix this, because I’ve done all I can do.”

    1. AngryOctopus*

      This. You can’t make the third company take fewer than 15 business days to process, for example. You can only tell someone “Here is the contact for Third Company, they are the ones processing this from X point”. It *feels* like passing the buck because people of course want their money, but you’re not the one in charge. LW1, your boss is the same. You feel like you should be protecting her because she has things going on. But she also has a job she needs to do! And it’s not your job to explain what she’s doing. Saying “Oh, Boss is taking care of that, let me connect you directly, or you can email her directly to get the status” is not being mean to anyone. It’s putting the responsibility where it belongs.

      1. 653-CXK*

        Exactly.

        I’m prone to people-please sometimes, but this is a case where this action is outside my scope of my job. I can try to cajole the third party to work harder to get the payment out, but after several passive-aggressive emails from other providers, I decided not be the man in the middle anymore. “Oh, third party is handling this, here’s their contact, they will assist you” isn’t the answer the provider wants, but is the answer I’m giving as it’s the correct source.

        (For clarity, I’m the liaison between the company I work for and the third party. The people who work for this third party are excellent, but are prone to burps and belches in the process.)

  13. Zarniwoop*

    #4
    Why settle for equal pay? If there’s going to be variation in pay shouldn’t the person with more education and experience get a bit more?

    1. Great Frogs of Literature*

      I agree with you in principle, but it’s probably easier for LW (who is also new at the company and doesn’t have a lot of capital, or experience with this HR department) to win on “paying Jane less when she has more experience is likely illegal” argument than on “to be fair, we should pay Jane more.”

    2. Mockingjay*

      Yes.

      But businesses are very imperfect and as others in this thread have pointed out, disparities in pay occur through initial negotiation, managers who do little to ensure that employee pay is commensurate with skills & experience over time, biases, not all employers pay market rate…

      I agree that the female employee is due more. But OP4 also has to negotiate their corporate structure. I speculate that OP4 has salary caps or limits to deal with, or being new themself, doesn’t have a lot of capital yet to make substantive changes, which is why they wrote in for advice on the best approach.

    3. A. Lab Rabbit*

      And they may have pay bands built in such a way that the female candidate does end up getting slightly more as a result. Same pay band, but at the higher end.

    4. dereyna88@gmail.com*

      One of the reasons our HR is responsible for salaries is that they have a rubric they apply when setting salaries. Someone could have more work experience/education but less applicable experience/education to the position. I wouldn’t ‘automatically’ assume someone with a higher degree (especially if it isn’t required and/or applicable to the job) should be paid more, or that their years of experience correlate directly to the job.

      1. AngryOctopus*

        This. Someone could have a bachelors and 5 years of experience, but all their experience is in Specialty A, while someone with a masters and 15 years might have all their experience in General Stuff. Specialty A commands more money because it’s rare and the business can get more clients because of it.
        I do think the most important thing is if HR can say “We are paying him more because of [Business Needs/Reasons]”, rather than waffling and saying “Oh we didn’t realize”. Even being able to say “he negotiated, but you’re right we’ll raise her salary to match” is at least a good outcome.

  14. shush!*

    Not related to any of these stories but I received an autoplay ad on the site this morning with sound, which is incredibly disruptive. Is there any way to ensure these ads don’t play on the site?

    1. Jackalope*

      If you look above the comments and below the letters and responses, there is a place to report ads that are causing problems (including the issues you mentioned). That’s the best way to make sure Alison sees your comment.

    2. No Tribble At All*

      When you go to the “add comment” prompt, there’s a hyperlink for “report an ad, tech, or typo issue here”. I’ll link in the next comment.

    3. Antilles*

      In most browsers, you can right click on the tab and choose “Mute Site” and it’ll permanently mute the site. Doesn’t stop the ad itself, but it won’t jump-scare you by suddenly making noise.

      1. But...*

        Alison makes the site free to readers because of ad revenue; suggesting people block those probably impacts her ability to keep doing that (versus moving it all to a paywalled substack etc.)

    5. Ask a Manager* Post author

      Ads that auto-play sound aren’t supposed to be allowed here; if you get one, please report it! Look for the PubNation logo (“PN”) beneath the ad and click it. A small window will open, and you can click “Report Ad.” You’ll be shown a report form to fill out, which will send all the info necessary to find the ad. Or you can use the form others mentioned above (linked right above the comment box), but this is the fastest way for us to find it.

      1. The cat is in my lap now*

        Ive had an autoplay audio ad three times now, including today. I’ll report it above.

  16. anon4this*

    for #4, I’m confused- couldn’t have Jonah been offered the same rate as Jane, and simply negotiated his pay increase during the interview?
    Perhaps Jane is unmotivated by money if she did not try to negotiate…there’s so many “what ifs” it seems strange to boil it down to simply sexism.

    And now, Jane’s just getting a pay increase because on paper she’s “more qualified”- the manager is assuming this of a new employee they haven’t managed yet. Couldn’t Jane be lacking soft skills that perhaps Jonah has, that become evident during the interviews?

    And this puts Jane on pedestal, outside out of her own making besides her inability to negotiate higher pay, and may even cast a harsher spotlight on her if she makes any mistakes.

    This is without mentioning the privilege and cost required with higher education in America, where specialized degrees tend to come from one racial and gender demographic only (middle class white women).
    The implication of this whole answer feels to me is to prioritize certain people above others in workplace promotion under the guise of a “level playing field” which isn’t earned through acumen/experience but through educational credentials alone, which is icky and a little weird IMO.

    2. Jay (no, the other one)*

      Specialized degrees are only held by middle class white women? There’s no question that economic and racial privilege have a huge impact on people’s ability to access higher ed. Your statement is still a sweeping and inaccurate generalization and would surprise my many BIPOC and male colleagues who hold MA/MS, MSN, PhD, MD, PysD, and various other advanced degrees. Some of them grew up with more than enough; many did not. Many of my white colleagues grew up with less than enough.

      If there’s a legit reason for the discrepancy, someone can explain that to OP when she asks the question.

        1. B’Elanna*

          As a Black woman, it truly amazes me how many people attach “white” to “women” where there’s nothing in the context to indicate it. I get that it’s trying to be sensitive (at least, in theory it is; I often have my doubts), but the end result is often erasure. I have a specialized degree, as it happens.

            1. B’Elanna*

              Thanks! Teenage me wanted so badly to be her when I grew up (minus breaking a coworker’s nose, lol) that I couldn’t resist.

    3. Antilles*

      couldn’t have Jonah been offered the same rate as Jane, and simply negotiated his pay increase during the interview?
      That could very well be the case, but it doesn’t really matter. The law doesn’t care whether the gender-based pay discrepancy is because of negotiating skills, it’s still a gender-based pay discrepancy.

      1. AngryOctopus*

        This. If Jonah did indeed negotiate and Jane didn’t, the correct answer is to raise Jane to match Jonah’s negotiated pay.

    4. Irish Teacher.*

      for #4, I’m confused- couldn’t have Jonah been offered the same rate as Jane, and simply negotiated his pay increase during the interview?
      Perhaps Jane is unmotivated by money if she did not try to negotiate…there’s so many “what ifs” it seems strange to boil it down to simply sexism.

      While I agree it may not be as simple as deliberate sexism, this ignores the discrepancies in how free people are to negotiate and how able they are to do so. Not trying to negotiate does not suggest somebody is “unmotivated by money.” It is far more like that they didn’t realise that that the company was willing to pay more or they were unfamiliar with the normal wages in their field or they came from a lower income background and therefore the pay seemed more to them than to somebody who grew up in wealth or that they were shy or lacking in confidence or underestimated themselves or in this case, being a woman, knew they were at higher risk for having the offer pulled if they negotiated.

      Being able to negotiation both requires a certain degree of privilege in order to know that you won’t be judged for it and is also a skill in and of itself and not one most colleges, etc teach.

      So yeah, it is very likely that he negotiated a higher salary but that in itself could indicate unconscious sexism, in that they may have been more open to negotation with him or that he may have been encouraged more from childhood onwards to push himself forward whereas women are generally taught to sit down and stay quiet, be polite, nobody likely people who are bossy and pushy, you’ll only get yourself taken out of consideration, let your work speak for itself.

      1. Hannah Lee*

        On your last paragraph, there’s also the reality that women are very often penalized -in lower pay, lost opportunities, being labeled as b****y, difficult, not a team player, not c-suite material when they do exhibit the exact same confident, self-advocating, negotiating behaviors that men are encouraged to exhibit – and which BTW the men are often rewarded for … if not with what they’re asking for in the moment, at least with a ‘gold-star’ of ‘he’s an ambitious go-getter; I should keep him in mind for future advancement’ in their minds/personnel files.

    5. metadata minion*

      Especially given the current state of the economy, it seems vanishingly unlikely that Jane is “unmotivated by money”.

      1. Jay (no, the other one)*

        Oh, but don’t you know that us wimmin only need enough money for clothes and trinkets and, you know, girly stuff? /sarcasm

        1. Certified Orange Cat*

          Yeah, we only work to find ourselves a husband! He can give us all the pin money we want.

          Please excuse me while I go sanitise the hands that wrote this.

          1. Dazzling You Too*

            We’re one step away from “all those wimminfolk actually want is to be able to stay at home with their many babies that they definitely also want. They’re so naturally good at it.” Bleckkkkk

        2. Hannah Lee*

          Oh, And they really shouldn’t be focusing on full time work anyway, they should be looking after the menfolk and children in their lives.
          (insert eyeroll here)

      2. Bathyphysa Conifera*

        Isn’t that why all of us work–because we are unmotivated by money, and would choose to be paid less than people doing the same work at the same company so we could prove it?

    7. Ask a Manager* Post author

      It’s illegal to pay men and women differently for the same work outside of an established merit or seniority system, regardless of how they negotiated.

    8. Snow Globe*

      “The implication of this whole answer feels to me is to prioritize certain people above others in workplace promotion under the guise of a “level playing field” which isn’t earned through acumen/experience but through educational credentials alone, which is icky and a little weird IMO.”

      But you think it’s okay to prioritize paying people more because they negotiated better?

      1. Bathyphysa Conifera*

        Just possibly one group negotiated better because that group has seen evidence all their lives that asking for more will be seen as a sign of strength and rewarded, so there’s no risk. While the other group will have seen evidence all their lives that asking for more will get them branded as a difficult shrew, and asking is high risk.

        1. Parakeet*

          And even if that’s not why one particular person negotiated more than a different particular person, it’s like I’ve said before – unless maybe negotiation is one of the required job skills, people shouldn’t have to haggle for fair pay. If you want to reward strong performance and experience, have a ladder for individual contributors (teapot maker I, teapot maker II, senior teapot maker, etc) and maybe have performance bonuses or salary merit increases based on performance reviews.

          In this case the woman has more experience than the man, and a particular qualification. There could be other reasons the man is getting paid more (I once held a state-funded job that had the concept of “bilingual pay” i.e. if your job was bilingual you automatically got paid a certain amount more), but at the very least it really needs to be investigated!

    9. Owl-a-roo*

      Okay, but even aside from all of these assumptions, the woman literally has at least five more years of experience in the related field. She’s been doing this for 50% longer than the male new hire! In my field (and, I suspect, many other technical fields), this additional experience alone would qualify the woman for a higher tier of employment (think level 2 analyst vs. level 1 analyst) and salary.

      If they were truly hired at the same time for the exact same position and title, it’s bonkers for the person with fewer qualifications to be hired in at a higher rate.

      1. Freya*

        In my country (Australia), that kind of thing is literally coded into many of the sets of bare-minimum legal employment conditions and standards for each industry, called Awards, especially for the less-experienced levels of employees. In the Award I’m covered under (the Clerks Award, which covers paper-pushers who aren’t covered under anything more specific, like the Banking, Finance and Insurance Award), there’s three different minimum payrates for entry level employees (‘level 1’) based on whether they’ve been doing the job for 1 year or 3 years.

        (after that point, the minimum payrate up is ‘level 2 – year 1’, which is basically the same as a level 1 except you’re expected to be able to do things under ‘general direction’ as compared to being told what to do all the time for everything)

    10. Señorita Flufflekins*

      Are you deliberately ignoring the fact that Jane has a lot more experience–more than 15 years versus less than 10–as well as a more advanced degree?

      The only “pedestal” I see is you assuming that because the man is paid more than a woman, he deserves it, and should be given slack, rather than being expected to live up to a higher standard to match that higher pay.

    11. fhqwhgads*

      This
      “couldn’t have Jonah been offered the same rate as Jane, and simply negotiated his pay increase during the interview?
      Perhaps Jane is unmotivated by money if she did not try to negotiate…there’s so many “what ifs” it seems strange to boil it down to simply sexism.”

      is literally the exact systemic problem the law exists to prevent.

  17. Bee*

    LW4: I wish I’d thought to bring up pay equity when I found myself in a similar situation not long after I started my first full-time job. When I was hired, my boss said my salary was “the most they could offer right now” – given that I was working part time for the same group I was about to start the full-time position with, I was just excited about having more hours to use to get my work done. In retrospect, I should have tried to negotiate for more money, or at the very least new equipment. (I got a partially-broken hand-me-down laptop from my predecessor that was six months out of warranty, and was expected to use it for video editing.)

    Six months after I got hired, my team filled another full-time position – the role was exactly the same as mine, but this team member was making $5000 more a year than I did, and got all new equipment – new desktop computer, new laptop, and even an iPad. And the new hire didn’t even have a degree in the field. (I did.)

    I bet y’all can guess what gender the new hire was.

    It took two years and a change in management for me to finally get a pay equity raise. When I checked with my new manager about possibly getting a raise to match what my co-worker was making, she was horrified and said I should be making even more than that, and got to work fixing it for me.

  18. Im going to Lemkin*

    For #4, I wonder if the current team members are being paid at Jane’s or Jonah’s rate, because there could be a lot more leveling up than just one person

  19. Of two minds (but not today!)*

    OMG, don’t lie to clients about the status of their taxes! If they rely on your statements, it could endanger them, and that, in turn could endanger the business. A person who thinks they “have to” lie to prevent clients getting “upset with me” does not belong in a business like tax preparation, so please look elsewhere for the next step in your career. The clients’ being upset is unpleasant, but doesn’t pose a danger to you, whereas your lying could pose a danger to them. At the very least, be grown up enough to acknowledge that the lying is a choice you make.

    1. morethantired*

      Yeah, ” say whatever to keep the customers happy” only works if the work actually gets done. Like if their taxes will actually get done and you’re just buying time, it’s one thing. But LW can’t know it will actually get done and so they’re not helping anyone by lying.

      1. Another One*

        And if they don’t get done by the 15th, they’ll just have more angry customers.

        We often talk here about making problematic colleagues, your managers problem rather than you dealing with the issue. But that is just as true when it’s customers and you can’t can’t resolve their problems.

        You need to make this your boss’s problem. Forward the calls to your boss (or their voicemail.) Email your boss and cc: the client.

        The point of this isn’t necessarily the work for the client getting done, so much as client knowing that you are doing what YOU can to get their work done.

  20. Constance Lloyd*

    LW3: I just did something similar. I began job hunting about three months before my lease ended. One month before I moved, I told my employer I was moving and that if it was possible to continue working remotely, I would love to do so. Otherwise, my last day would be X. They chose to keep me, and the extra notice time was enough for them to iron out all the wrinkles of me working from a different state but small enough that I wasn’t worried the would try to push me out sooner. (And more importantly, if they had fired me sooner I would be financially stable.)

    1. PennylaneTX*

      I could have been LW3 in 2019 (and did come to the Friday open thread for advice!). My company was very remote-friendly and had employees in the state I was moving to. However, my boss specifically wanted someone in my role in the office three days a week, she valued the in-person and face time (I was eventually replaced with someone who, wait for it, lived in another state, but that’s another can of beans). I was lucky in that I talked to her about my relocating in March, with my timeline being “sometime this fall”. Her initial thought was no, she then asked for time to think about it, and then fully decided no.

      Come June, she asked for a hard exit date, and I gave Labor Day. I had given notice on my apartment in March (my lease was up in May), moved in with a friend for the summer, and after Labor Day moved out of state. I lived with my parents (who lived in the state I was relocating to, just not in the city I wanted to live in) for two months and job-hunted in the city I now live in. My timing was about as good as it could have been, I was lucky in that I had temporary housing options, but I was absolutely thrown for a loop when I was told “no” regarding my relocation request. Prepare for all scenarios!

      1. LW#3*

        I do have the option of living with my parents in new state temporarily while job hunting.

        Few more details I did not include: I have been with my employer 7 years. Was fully in the office until about 6 months ago. I asked to go fully remote due to health issues, and they somewhat agreed because they did not want to lose me. Same role, new team and originally supposed to be 90% remote (1-2 days per month onsite), then someone else quit & I lived closest to the client they served. They asked if I would be willing to go there 1-2 days per week (40 miles round trip) otherwise they would have to hire someone. I said yes, wish I hadn’t. It is really just that one client they will have to hire someone else for. Hoping they go for it.

  21. Irish Teacher.*

    I’d love an update on number 3. I know it’s not a massively exciting set of circumstances but it could go a number of ways and I’d like to know what ends up happening – if the employer agrees and if the LW ends up relocating.

    1. Hlao-roo*

      I would also like an update, so I just put it on my list to ask for during the October 2026 “call for updates” post!

    2. LW#3*

      I will put it in my calendar so I don’t forget to update. Still hoping it goes my way :)

  22. JukeBox*

    Meal break waivers: could an employee do it daily so that they retain the right overall? For example, “I, (EmplyeeName), choose to waive the unpaid meal break on (SpecificDate) and instead work through the break and be paid for that time.”

    1. MN is kind of awesome, actually*

      Interesting question! The MN Department of Labor doesn’t specify one way or another, so my guess is that it would be worth a try.

      Alternately, call ’em and ask! I’ve had questions before, and the DOL had a reasonable hold time, were happy to answer my questions, and let me know that they were there when and if I felt I needed to escalate the situation I was asking about but did a good job walking the line between making me feel supported vs pressured.

      Furthermore, Minnesota passed a wage theft law a few years back, and as part of that law they hired a bunch of new employees to ensure they had enough personnel to actually handle a surge in reports. Plus there’s the recent sick pay law, and the changes that just happened to the breaks law verbage (to make it less vague and more clear, for anyone not in MN). The short version is that you should step carefully around worker laws in Minnesota because this is one of the states that actually cares. BUT, they are also happy to answer your questions, including hypotheticals and ‘hypotheticals’, and set you up for success as best they can.

    2. Malarkey01*

      Typically these are just CYAs that say you’re aware you’re entitled to a break and can choose to take it or not. They’re there in case you ever tried to claim you weren’t given breaks and didn’t know about the law.

      I’ve never seen a waiver that said I’m never taking a break or one that would need to indicate you were waiver it for this date but not this one.

  23. Parenthesis Guy*

    #4 – This is one reason why having the hiring manager in the salary discussion is important. In theory, the manager could give reasons why they’d rather one employee get paid more than another even in a case like this. This is especially the case if they have a budget and don’t want to pay x + $5k for an employee.

    But if the manager is writing in to complain, then presumably the male employee doesn’t have the skillset to be worth an extra 2% and a case could be made that he should be earning less than the female candidate. HR should catch this, but the hiring manager has more skin in the game.

  24. Firefly*

    #3
    It’s not clear from OP’s post whether or not her job can TRULY be done remote, or if it’s just wishful thinking on her part that it can be done fully remote. She says she meets 2 days a week on-site with clients. Maybe meeting with the clients can be done over zoom, but maybe that doesn’t work for the kind of work she’s doing, or maybe her job would not agree to letting her work fully remote for this position she’s in.

    I don’t think she should approach this from a moving-out-of-state perspective. Because if her job can not be done completely remote it doesn’t matter if she moves or not, the job is going to say you can’t work full remote. So instead of bringing up the subject of moving, she needs to see if her job would let her work completely remote right now.

    If they say yes, then she would have a better argument for continuing to stay remote when she moves to another state. If they say no, then she knows that just because she moves that’s not going to change things. Then she’s in a better place of knowing what her options are.

    1. A. Lab Rabbit*

      She didn’t say she meets in person. At my company, almost all customer contact is remotely. The only time we see a client is during an audit, when they come to us. But during covid, they did lots of remote audits.

      I’m going to trust that LW knows the details of her job better than we do.

      1. Firefly*

        “I’m going to trust that LW knows the details of her job better than we do.”
        What OP said is “I currently work hybrid (two days per week on-site with clients and three remote).” She did NOT say “I meet with my clients on Zoom so it can be done completely remotely.” She did NOT say “I can do my job completely remote.”

        So like I said, it NOT clear from the information OP provided whether or not she can work fully remotely or not. And even if it CAN be done completely remote that does NOT mean her job will agree to let her work fully remotely either.

        1. fhqwhgads*

          This is true, although I will say I have known a bunch of jobs where the employer did have some people in a given role fully remote and others hybrid, and the only distinction was “well you’re in City, and so are the clients, so you have to be hybrid because you can go on site”. Whereas people in not-city were permitted to be fully remote because it was too far to go onsite. It’s not clear if that’s a thing with OP, but it certainly could be.

    2. LW#3*

      My company does have a handful of people in my similar role that work fully remote.

      Few more details I did not include: I have been with my employer 7 years. Was fully in the office until about 6 months ago. I asked to go fully remote due to health issues, and they somewhat agreed because they did not want to lose me. Same role, new team and originally supposed to be 90% remote (1-2 days per month onsite), then someone else quit & I lived closest to the client they served. They asked if I would be willing to go there 1-2 days per week (40 miles round trip) otherwise they would have to hire someone. I said yes, wish I hadn’t. It is really just that one client they will have to hire someone else for.

      1. Firefly*

        Thanks for the additional details. So you’ve been with them for 7 years and they were willing to let you go completely remote before. Also, you agreed to serve a client so they wouldn’t have to hire someone, that’s a point in your favor, shows you’re willing to pitch in and help out. So you have some “social capital” as they say.

        I still think your best bet is to ask to go back to fully remote and not mention anything about moving states, not until you get approved to go back to full remote. You could say you’ve been helping with this client for a while now, but your health is getting worse and you’d like to go back to fully remote. Hopefully they agree, and then you don’t have to worry about timing the move or anything like that.

        Good luck!

  25. Punk*

    LW1: You need to tell your clients to get someone else to do their taxes. They are the ones who will be fined if Katie doesn’t file on time. “It’s not your responsibility” isn’t the right call here. There are higher standards of integrity and duty in accountancy, and the LW is standing by while they know clients are being screwed. LW needs to act within the expected ethics of the field, especially if they are a CPA or have any other professional license.

  26. I'm A Little Teapot*

    LW #3 – you’re onsite at clients 2 days a week. Are all your coworkers in similar roles also onsite at the clients? If no one else is fully remote, then it’s probably pretty safe to assume that you won’t be the first. Sure, ask the question. But you should also update your resume and start looking for a new job/try to transfer internally to a job in the other city.

    1. Another One*

      I do wish that LW 3 had been more clear. I read “on site” as face to face with clients either at the office or at their offices, but I think some people read it as having client meetings 2 days a week.

      And those are very different things. One can be done in another state and one can’t be.

      1. AngryOctopus*

        This. From the letter I took that OP meets face to face with clients (hence the reason for being on site) twice a week. If that’s the case, it’s not likely to matter that the meetings *could* be done remotely. Maybe the business wants them to continue in person. Maybe they’ve found that if offered remote, an unacceptably high (to them) proportion of clients would say no and go elsewhere. There are a lot of reasons that OP may be turned down, and she should be prepared with alternate plans.

    2. LW#3*

      There one client that wanted the person assigned to them to be at their office 1-2 days per week. That is the one I would not be able to continue working with.
      I have a few co-workers in a similar role that are fully remote, and more that are hybrid.

      I did not want the letter to be too long, so some additional details: I have been with my employer 7 years. Was fully in the office until about 6 months ago. I asked to go fully remote due to health issues, and they somewhat agreed because they did not want to lose me. Same role, new team and originally supposed to be 90% remote (1-2 days per month onsite), then someone else quit & I lived closest to the client they served. They asked if I would be willing to go there 1-2 days per week (40 miles round trip) otherwise they would have to hire someone. I said yes, wish I hadn’t. It is really just that one client they will have to hire someone else for. That is why I feel there is chance they will allow it.

  27. Left Turn at Albuquerque*

    LW #1, if Katie is a licensed CPA (and you’re in the US – not sure what your options would be elsewhere), reach out to your state’s Board of Accountancy. I can only tell you how my state’s Board handles complaints, but what you describe is certainly something we’d want to look into, and that in itself might prod her into correcting her conduct. If you’re reluctant to file a complaint because you’re her employee, rather than deceive clients about what’s going on you can encourage them to contact the Board themselves.

  28. Seeking Second Childhood*

    @Alison, how do hotels get away with shifts where there’s one hourly person on duty so no ability to truly sign out for the state’s mandatory breaks?

    1. Similar but not exact*

      Not hotels but I did this as the lone late night operator in a television station. My breaks were paid basically. Which also meant I wasn’t allowed to leave the property. If my break was interrupted (ie something broke and I had to fix it) I could resume it after. Since television is schedule based, I would pick a show that rarely had issues and take my break then. It worked out probably 90% of the time.

  29. MN is kind of awesome, actually*

    Interesting question! The MN Department of Labor doesn’t specify one way or another, so my guess is that it would be worth a try.

    Alternately, call ’em and ask! I’ve had questions before, and the DOL had a reasonable hold time, were happy to answer my questions, and let me know that they were there when and if I felt I needed to escalate the situation I was asking about but did a good job walking the line between making me feel supported vs pressured.

    Furthermore, Minnesota passed a wage theft law a few years back, and as part of that law they hired a bunch of new employees

  30. Any Mouse for This One*

    LW#1 – I’m in HR, and dealing with a Katie right now. Part of my Katie’s problem is they were hired to run one particular department, got asked to help out another department, and they discovered they enjoy working in the second department more. And our Katie became fixated on the second department, and nearly stopped being involved with the department they were hired to run. That department has multiple issues which need almost immediate resolution. and now Katie is dealing with heavy personal stuff, and is dropping balls left and right.

    We hired a SME for the second department, and Katie was told to start focusing on the department they were hired to run. Katie can’t let the other department go and keeps involving herself in things she has been directed to stop doing by her Boss. The original department keeps getting multiple complaints regarding the Supervisors not effectively leading their teams, client complaints and other concerns, yet Katie remains hyper fixated on the second department. Meanwhile, Katie is dealing with her personal stuff outside of work, so the department she was hired to run is getting even less management because of her fixation on the second department. She is going to get put on a Performance Improvement Plan, which I can see ending in termination because she won’t follow her Manager’s instructions and focus on the department she was hired to run. It’s just a mess.

  31. Higher Ed Self*

    Reading #4’s letter made me sad. It reminds me of at least the three times I know about (two by admission of my employers, one by my coworker) where I’ve made less than my male counterparts.

  32. Coverage Associate*

    Re #1. LW should work out a script for LW to use with clients. Something that is true but doesn’t keep LW on the phone all day. It may be very vague and won’t really satisfy clients, but like others have said, the upset clients are Katie’s issue.

    In my profession and many others, there are duties of loyalty to the employer. While this doesn’t mean that we can be dishonest for our employer, we also can’t do things directly contrary to their business interests, like recommending clients hire a competitor, unless the employer approves. I don’t know about referring clients to the licensing authorities.

    I have been the tax preparation client of 2 “Katies.” After the second time, I just gave up on hiring someone to do my taxes, but I was a lawyer who had done my own taxes a few times by then. I also try really hard not to take out my frustration on assistants and similar who I know aren’t really the cause of my problems.

    The first time, I was still in law school and didn’t know that there was anything amiss until I received a notice from the IRS in May or June. I was able to speak to the CPA the next business day. He explained that there had been a death in the family of the hourly staffer who prepared the first draft of my return. He took care of the IRS notice. No hard feelings.

    The second time, I had been a lawyer for a few years and had done my taxes myself since graduating from law school. The CPA didn’t review all the documents I provided, and I caught errors in 2 draft returns. His office did let me know that they wouldn’t be able to fix the errors by the filing deadline and they were filing an extension. Annoying, but at least I wasn’t worried about penalties.

    And then silence for months after April 15. My communications had been electronic and through an intern. I couldn’t reach the CPA or the intern. I was worried it was all a scam. I found the CPA’s contact information with the licensing authority and sent a certified letter, which was returned. Eventually, something got through and I learned that our returns were filed in late April or May.

  33. Raida*

    yet my employer keeps sending me emails prompting me to sign a “meal break waiver” so I can “choose to waive this unpaid meal break and instead work through your break and be paid for that time.

    EITHER they are saying “Hey, i see you worked through your break, do you want to put that in writing, thanks?”
    OR they are saying “Hey, I don’t want you to have a break. Sign the paper, sign the paper, sign the paper.”

    Without knowing you or your manager or if you have worked straight through before, there’s no way to tell. So let’s assume this is simply a paperwork liability issue – IF you work through a break, put that in writing, and discuss with your manager when that should be done (start of week, start of day, mid-shift, end-of-shift-oh-wow-i-didn’t-take-a-break). And if your manager brings it up again without you having worked through a break cheerfully tell them “Don’t worry I remember! If A then B, if C then D.” with a thumbs-up. If they are attempting to bully you into giving up your breaks, this doesn’t give them the response they want, and if they aren’t then you’re reminding them you are aware of policy and competent.

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