Ask a Manager

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

1. Trainer had religious messages on his presentation screen

I attended a multi-day training a few months back where the trainer who was running the presentations had extreme religious images/quotes as his laptop background, so every time they were between presentations, the image was projected on the screens at the front of the classroom. If the images/quotes had been of the “love thy neighbor” type, I probably would’ve clocked it as not the most appropriate in a professional environment but also pretty harmless. The message was not this. It was “the wages of sin is death,” we’re all sinners who will burn in hell if not for Jesus type of quotes, arranged in the shape of a large cross. It was … extremely unsettling.

I’m guessing someone said something about it, because about halfway through the training he switched his background to a generic Microsoft background. I had wanted to say something, but was unsure how to approach it since religion is such an individual and personal thing, and it felt weird as an attendee to ask the trainer to change his screen. How would one go about asking someone who is in a position of authority at least if not power to make such a change?

To make the question more interesting, I’m interviewing for a senior leader position next month, and that position supervises that particular trainer. If I were this person’s supervisor and saw that kind of religious message on his computer, how would I address it? If it’s just on his computer background and wasn’t projected to an audience, do you say nothing? If it were a less violent message, would it be okay if it were projected to an audience? Would a blanket “don’t have a religious background when projecting to an audience at work” rule be legally appropriate? I know general expression of one’s religion in the workplace is protected and I would never want to single someone out for their religious beliefs, but this feels different.

Wow, yeah, that’s wildly inappropriate. You weren’t there for religious proselytizing; you were there for a work training.

You were absolutely entitled as a training participant to speak up and ask him to change it. One way to do it would be to talk to him privately on a break and say, “I don’t know if you realize your screen background has religious quotes, but I’d appreciate if you’d change it to something neutral since we’re here for a work training.” On the other hand, you’d also be on solid ground in speaking up during the class itself and saying, “I find that background really distracting and off-topic. Could it be changed?” (Personally I’d do that one because I think there’s value in other people seeing pushback on this stuff, and I also wouldn’t want to sit here with it for hours before an opportunity to talk to him privately, but I’m also less shy about making a scene over this sort of BS than many people are.)

As his manager, it would be 100% okay to require that all your trainers use neutral presentation backgrounds with no personal messages on them (this would cover not just religion, but sports, politics, marijuana leaves, and on and on).

2. Should I report my son’s friend’s dad for sharing confidential student data?

I teach history an elite prep school (something akin to Chilton for you Gilmore girls fans out there). Thanks to tuition discounts that faculty receive, my son “Jack” is able to attend and is in the fifth grade. The school does standardized testing twice a year. During the most recent round of testing, Jack was sick and did not perform his best. My husband and I chose not to show him his test scores because he’s a perfectionist and we knew it didn’t reflect what he is capable of. Recently, I overheard his best friend, “Milo,” teasing him because Milo had outscored him on the test. He knew Jack’s scores in specific categories and was able to compare them to his own.

Given that Jack had no idea what his score was, Milo had to get the information somewhere else. I strongly suspect Milo learned the scores from his father, who works for the school in IT. His father has the ability to access grades and test scores that others can’t.

Here’s my dilemma — do I report my suspicions? On the one hand, Milo’s father is potentially sharing confidential information with students, which is a fireable offense. On the other hand, if Milo’s father loses his job, there’s no way their family can afford to continue to send Milo to our school. We’ve discussed our financial circumstances before, and the fact that our children can only attend due to our employment with the school. I don’t want Milo to suffer for his father’s mistake. I also have no proof, just my suspicions.

I think you should report it. Disclosing confidential student data is a really big deal, and if Milo’s father was truly oblivious enough to that that he’d disclose Jack’s data to Jack’s best friend (what did he think was going to happen?!), there’s a problem that needs to be addressed.

That said, you don’t actually know this came from Milo’s father. You only know that somehow Jack’s confidential data found its way to a schoolmate. Report that part of it, not the part you can’t prove. The school knows who Milo’s dad is, and if that is indeed what happened, they’re highly likely to be able to put it together themselves. But for all we know, it leaked out some other way — so just stick to the pieces you know for sure.

3. Why won’t people include my middle name?

My name is ​Alexandra Jane Smith, and I’m very attached to it in full. My first name is Alexandra, and that is what I introduce myself as, but I hate it when things are addressed to Alexandra Smith, or my name badge misses out Jane. I know this is a small thing, but it’s my name! It’s particularly frustrating when I get official or important documents without my middle name. ​

​Any suggestions on how to approach this, or just accept my fate as Alexandra (Jane) Smith?

Yeah, if you introduce yourself as Alexandra and you go by Alexandra, you’re going to get addressed as Alexandra (or Alexandra Smith) and Alexandra (or Alexandra Smith) will be on your name badge … since most people don’t use their middle names except on extremely formal legal documents (and often not even then).

You can certainly try to head it off beforehand by letting people know, “I prefer my full name, Alexandra Jane Smith, on documents/name badges.” That will work some of the time, but it won’t work all the time.

Even if you went by Alexandra Jane, you’d still be fighting an uphill battle — ask all the Mary Janes who find Mary on their name tags, or all the people with hyphenated last names who find only half of their last name printed.

It’s perfectly fine to have the preference! But you’ll be happier if you accept that, realistically, your preferences are different from the naming conventions people are used to.

4. Can I put relevant jobs first on my resume?

I did some health counseling work decades ago, and started again during the pandemic for a major hospital system. In between I did a variety of things totally outside the health-related field. As I try to get back into health-related jobs, can I list my work experience by relevant experiences first, and then fill in the rest underneath? Like so:

RELEVANT WORK EXPERIENCE:
2020-2023 – relevant health-related job
1997-2004 – relevant health related job
1992-1997 – relevant health related job
2004-2020 – list other non-health-related jobs here

Would that seem weird on a resume? I’m concerned that a quick glance won’t show me off in the best light if I list the jobs chronologically.

It’s completely normal to separate out relevant experience and list it first, when some of your recent work history is really unrelated to what you’re applying for now. You just need an additional heading in the other for the less relevant jobs, like this:

RELEVANT EXPERIENCE:
2020-2023 – relevant health-related job
1997-2004 – relevant health related job
1992-1997 – relevant health related job

OTHER EXPERIENCE:
2004-2020 – list other non-health-related jobs here

Also, you don’t need to go back 20 years. Feel free to stop at 12-15, depending on what produces the strongest resume. (It’s also okay to go back further for the relevant jobs while only including the more recent non-relevant ones.)

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

1. My coworker is angry that I advocated for myself when I was hired

I work as a contractor at a company. I’m paid hourly and work a normal 40-hour work week. My coworker got curious about my contract and my schedule, and I was happy to answer some questions but not others. She got upset because I mentioned that I was very clear with what I wanted in this job when interviewing and when I was considering the offer. I even rejected an initial offer and later received a better offer.

I worry my coworker may make drama about it and cause others to become jealous as well. My manager seems to be happy with my work. I asked my coworker why she was upset and who she was upset with. Her answer in short is me because I shouldn’t be able to make demands during my interview. Do I ignore this and what do I do if it becomes drama?

Advocating for yourself and being clear on what it would take for you to accept a job isn’t “making demands”; it’s managing your career well and being appropriately assertive. If your coworker thinks people shouldn’t do that, that’s very sad for her; she’s internalized some seriously harmful beliefs.

Any chance you have the kind of relationship with her where you could say, “I was surprised you didn’t think people could or should do this in interviews. I regularly do it, and so do a lot of other people. I’d be glad to share with you how I’ve approached it in the past and what has worked, and you could try it yourself and hopefully negotiate well in future jobs.” (Make sure you say this in a genuinely warm and helpful tone, not a patronizing one.)

2. Do I thank someone for sending me work if he’s in a dispute with my friend?

A couple of years ago, a friend of mine, Gary, started a small company in the field in which I freelance. He hired Sean to be the manager. Neither Gary nor Sean lives in my city, but I saw them once while they were visiting; that’s the only time I’ve met Sean in person.

Sean oversaw a project I did for their company. He didn’t give me feedback for months, and when he did it was minimal. (I know I turned in solid work so this didn’t necessarily raise any flags for me.)

Fast forward about a year: Gary says that Sean is causing problems because he’s not giving feedback to anyone or performing the majority of the work he was hired to do. Being so behind schedule on everything was costing Gary thousands of dollars; he even had to take a second job to pay his rent. Eventually this led to a board meeting in which Sean was ousted.

Sean was, by all accounts, shocked, despite the fact that (according to Gary) he had been spoken to multiple times about these issues. There were threats of lawsuits, many dramatic emails, etc. But in the end, Sean disappeared into the ether. Gary is my friend, so I know I’m inclined to be on his side, but the fact that everyone else involved seemed to think Sean was the issue, plus the fact that it mirrored my own experience with him, made me think this wasn’t a witch hunt.

Fast forward six months: I get an email from someone interested in having me do some easy, well-paid freelance work … and they got my name from Sean. (Sean did not contact me to let me know he had referred me or follow up with me in any way.)

This freelance work has truly been a godsend — it’s my only steady stream of revenue at the moment. Do I have to thank Sean? We’ve only met once, have no relationship outside of the fact that we very briefly worked together, and he nearly made my friend homeless. Gary is so upset by the whole thing that I honestly believe he would see any communication with Sean as a betrayal.

But also, the referral was kind of him and extremely helpful. I’m a midwestern millennial woman, so the idea of not thanking him is crushing me with guilt but I know that that might be a me problem!

You don’t have to thank Sean, but you should. He referred you for easy, well-paid work that’s providing key income for you. It’s something you’d presumably like him to do again. And you don’t have any beef with Sean; Gary does. As badly as Sean’s work for Gary might have gone, that’s not really your business. (And for what it’s worth, Gary was Sean’s manager so he bears some responsibility for letting the problems go on as long as they did.)

Ultimately, you’re not involved in the Gary/Sean dispute and Sean referred you for work that you’re glad to have. If Gary takes issue with you sending him a civil thanks for that, Gary would be being a bad friend. (But also, you’re not obligated to disclose any of this to him.)

3. How to avoid burning out if you love your job

I landed a job I love so much. Let’s say I have a hobby of making banana pants, and I enjoy every aspect of it, even the stuff that most people dislike. Now I’ve gotten a job where I make banana pants for work. So I spend at least eight hours a day making banana pants, then I come home and do my hobby of making banana clothing for myself over the weekend. I try to keep a good work life balance, but I often find myself so engrossed in my work during the day that even if I intend to leave at 4, I often end up leaving at 6 because I’m just having too much fun — and even then I only leave at 6 because the train station nearest my work closes at 6:30. And that’s not even mentioning the times where I’ll bring my work projects home.

Due to my specific cocktail of neurodivergence, I also have trouble noticing that I’m not doing well until it’s too late. I don’t want to wake up one day and be like, “Oh wow, I am super depressed right now and have been for the past two months.” (Which has happened to me more than once.) I also don’t want to lose my love of making banana pants, which I’m afraid will happen if I keep going at the pace I’m going at.

Am I setting myself up for disaster here? If my hobby is making banana pants, am I still at risk for burnout? And if so, what are the signs of burnout and how can I combat it when my hobby is my job?

I do think you’re at risk of burnout even when you love your job. In fact, loving an activity and throwing yourself into it to the point that it consumes most of your waking hours is … kind of prime conditions for eventual burnout. Probably not this year! Maybe not next year. But eventually.

My advice is to find something else that you also love, or at least like a lot, and be deliberate about carving out space for it in your life too, so that your brain has more to engage it than just all banana pants all the time. I used to think the cure for burn-out was lots of downtime and relaxation — and sometimes it is — but what’s worked better for me personally is regularly using my brain for something completely different. Otherwise you’re just wearing the same grooves into it all the time and (at least for me) that’s been where my worst burn-out has come from.

4. Is this an exception to the “gifts flow downward” rule?

As someone who has managed many people in my long career, I fully support the “gifts flow downward” rule that you have expressed. This might be an exception though, and I’d like your opinion. My boss has invited our team of 8-10 senior-level colleagues to her house for a casual weekend afternoon together, along with our plus-ones. I’m generally a “don’t show up empty-handed” kind of person, so I want to bring something reasonable like a small plant or bottle of wine. That seems appropriate, right? Our boss is a supportive leader with good professional/personal boundaries, by the way.

That’s fine to do. You don’t need to do it — this is ultimately a work gathering, in the guise of a social one, so you don’t need to, but it’s likely to be perceived as gracious if you do. If you were very junior, I’d lean more on the side of nah, but you’re senior so the dynamics change a bit.

That said, unless you know your boss is a plant lover, I personally would not bring a plant or anything else that will require ongoing care, since for some people that’s like handing them a chore wrapped in pretty paper. But the general idea is fine!

5. Will having two two-year job stints damage my career?

I’ve been working in a male-dominated industry (97% men) and have always been the only woman on my team. Over the course of four years with my previous employer, I brought in $22 million for the company, but despite my success, I never received a promotion or a salary increase. After numerous attempts to negotiate for fair recognition, they refused, so I decided to leave. I accepted an executive position that was highly regarded in my field, becoming the only woman on the board. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a mistake. I was bullied constantly and denied the responsibilities we had agreed upon during the interview. The CEO even told me he would fire me if I got pregnant, claiming that mothers should stay home. After enduring two years of mistreatment, I resigned.

Now, I feel embarrassed for making the wrong choice and worry about how having a two-year stint on my resume might look. I’m also feeling pressure to stay long-term with my new employer, but I’m unsure if that’s what I want. They’ve assigned me to work in a developing country, 20 hours away from my family. The noise pollution here is unbearable. I haven’t been able to sleep through the night since I moved here. I’m okay with this arrangement for two years, but I’m concerned that having two consecutive two-year positions will reflect poorly on my resume. What do you think? I’ve been crying every night, overwhelmed with anxiety about my career path.

Leave! Please leave.

In the vast majority of fields, two two-year stints would not be a big deal at all. That’s well within the realm of “pretty normal” these days! Now, if you have four or five two-year stints in a row, it could be a bigger deal — but even that wouldn’t raise eyebrows in a lot of fields. (It would be more likely to be an issue for jobs where they expect and need people to stay longer than that, which still gives you access to a ton of jobs.)

Do be sure to do due diligence on the next job before you accept it since ideally you’d stay at the next one longer. But even then there’s no guarantee — jobs evolve, managers move on, life circumstances change.

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

1. Everyone at my new job loves my high school bully

I’m an actor and just started rehearsals for a play. A woman who bullied me terribly in high school is active in my city’s theater community. Luckily, I haven’t run into her as I was busy with college and then lived in a different city for a couple of years. One of my castmates offhandedly mentioned her. I said that I went to high school with her, but obviously did not mention the bullying. The castmate began singing her praises, and others joined in. I thought my heart was going to stop.

I’m nearly 30, but I am not over what she did to me. Without getting into details, she enlisted other students and even a faculty member in her bullying. I began self-harming, attempting suicide, and spent some time in intensive outpatient therapy.

I now have to hear about her almost every night. I can’t say anything about the bullying, because I don’t want to bring up old drama and I don’t want her to find out she still has this effect on me. The show will be over by November, but I don’t know if I can continue like this for that long. I’m physically ill and my work at my day job is slipping. Dropping out isn’t an option. What do you think I should do?

You’ve taken the two most obvious options off the table: saying something or dropping out. If you’re physically ill and it’s affecting your day job, you need to do one of those. Saying something would be the easiest! You don’t need to get into details; you can simply say, “Jane and I have a rough history and it’s messing with my focus to talk about her so frequently — could you not bring her up around me so often?”

Does this sound like there’s A Story and might it make people curious to know what happened? Yes. But that doesn’t need to be your problem. If anyone pries for details, you can say, “I really don’t want to talk about it, it was years ago.” If people wonder, so be it. The alternative is continuing to hear about her all the time.

However … if she’s active in your city’s theater community and you’re going to be part of that community, realistically this is likely to keep coming up. It’s actually pretty weird that they’re bringing her up so frequently — what is so interesting to them about this woman?! — but apparently that’s the situation. So I do think you’ve got to decide if you’re up for remaining active in that community yourself, knowing Jane will be be around/discussed, or whether you’d rather disengage. And that sucks! You should be able to participate in community theater if you want to. But those are probably the choices. I’m sorry you’re dealing with this.

Also, would it help to check in with a therapist for a few sessions, given the impact this is having on your quality of life? I imagine it might be awfully demoralizing to think you’re once again having to seek therapy because of Jane, but we’re talking about something that’s making you physically ill and affecting your job.

If all of this sounds like too much to bother to deal with, I’d honestly consider quitting the play. I know you said it’s not an option, but it would presumably be an option if you had something else health-related going on, right? (There too, I imagine it might be demoralizing to feel like you have to quit something all these years later because of Jane, but you really don’t need to just power through.)

2. My employee is bad at communicating

I am moving into a management position for the first time in many years. The last time I had a direct report, it was a disaster. My current direct report is great — he’s enthusiastic and a quick learner. This is also his first job out of college so it’s a big learning curve. And I really, really don’t want to mess up managing again!

So far the only issue I’ve encountered is a communication issue. When he’s speaking to me, I often find it hard to get a handle on what he’s trying to say, and end up having to ask a lot of questions so I can nail down the information.

For example, he will use the word “they” to refer to multiple individuals in a conversation, so I have to keep asking him which of the various people involved he’s referring to, or he’ll send Teams messages that are vague. The other day, he sent me a Teams message the other day about a technical issue during a presentation that said, “I keep seeing my messages” when what he meant was that his Teams notifications were popping up during a shared screen and he didn’t know how to turn them off.

I want to give him some constructive feedback, but saying “get better at communicating” doesn’t seem specific or actionable enough. Ideally, I’d like to be able to grasp what he’s saying without having to ask a lot of clarifying questions. Do you have any advice for how to address this, or any advice for a new manager who really, really wants to be a good manager?

The next time it happens, name it in the moment and ask clearly for what you want him to do differently. So for example, the next time he’s using “they” to refer to multiple people, say, “You’re saying ’they’ for a bunch of different people and I don’t know who you’re referencing. Can you make a point of using each person’s name, not just now but in all the time? It’ll make conversations easier to follow.” (I wonder if you’ve hesitated to say that because it’s so basic that it might feel condescending — but the fact is, what he’s doing is a problem and there’s no other way to get him to change it.) You can also name the pattern itself: “You sometimes send me messages without giving me enough background to know the context. For example, X and Y. Can you make a point of including a couple of sentences of context when you message me so that I have the background on what we’re talking about?”

More broadly: I don’t know what the management disaster was last time, but make sure you’ve reflected on whatever happened, identified what you should have done differently, and internalized those lessons. There’s also tons of help available for new managers if you seek out it! Weirdly, companies don’t always offer much support to new managers, but there’s guidance out there if you look for it. Ideally you’d have a more experienced manager as a mentor to bounce things off of, but there are books, classes, articles… Here’s one starting place.

3. Company wants us to pay for a work trip

Every year my company hosts a company trip for partners in the company (it’s a start-up, so a majority of employees were offered partnership).

This is my first year being invited to attend. We got a group “discount” at the recommended hotel the meetings will be held in and a $100 reimbursement. Alison, I’m at the admin level, I can’t feasibly drop $700 for a weekend and have to use a day of PTO to ensure I get there on a Friday. It’s optional to go, but we are HEAVILY encouraged and repeatedly asked to attend. After I pushed back, they finally booked the rooms for us and offered a partial work day to head out to the destination. But even then it’s still expensive, and they are refusing work from home. We also are attending work sessions that we are not going to be paid for under the guise that it’s strategic planning.

Am I crazy in thinking they should do more to cover our costs? Or do companies really just pay for rooms and everything else you cover?

Let me get this straight: They’re heavily pressuring you to attend a work trip but expecting you to pay for your own hotel (minus their contribution of $100) and use PTO to travel to it? And then while you’re there, it won’t count as work time?

Lol no. That’s utterly ridiculous.

Employers are expected to pay the cost of business travel (hotel and transportation at a minimum, and ideally meals as well), your travel time shouldn’t come out of PTO, and if you’re non-exempt you need to be paid for the work sessions that happen on the trip. That last part is federal law; it’s not up to them.

If the trip were both optional and purely recreational (like a reward where you weren’t expected to do any work), this would still be pretty stingy. The fact that it’s an actual work trip and you’re being pressured to go moves this into the realm of outrageous.

What happens if you say, “I’d like to go but I can’t afford the expenses or the PTO”?

4. How do I get out of some of these meetings?

My calendar is filling up with 1:1 check-ins with people not in my vertical. These check-ins started as a way to collaborate more in our remote jobs, and often they are helpful. But I think it’s taking over my week a little too much and I’m constantly struggling to find focus time. I think it would be helpful to reduce cadence on a few of these check-ins but it’s hard to tell people “I want to meet with you less!” Do you have a suggestion on how to ask this diplomatically?

“I’ve been slammed lately and need to carve out more time for project work (or “to meet some deadlines” or whatever makes sense in your context). Can we change the cadence of our meetings to ___?” (Fill in the blank with monthly, every other week, as needed, or whatever makes sense.) Hell, you can even say, “I urgently need to carve out some space on my calendar over the next few weeks. Can we put our check-ins on hold for now?”

5. Did I mess up by referring to a “suspended” hiring process?

I recently had a great first interview with an in-house recruiter for a role I am really excited about. The recruiter told me that she would be moving me to the next step and that I would hear from her within the next week. After two weeks, I sent a brief, polite follow-up email just to check in and see if there were any updates.

The recruiter wrote back saying that they had several recruitment processes going on and they were “unable to progress any further for now” with recruitment for the role in question. I replied that I was sorry to hear that the process had been suspended, but I was still excited about the opportunity and asked her to please get back in touch when they were ready to restart.

She responded that the process was not suspended, it was ongoing, they just couldn’t move as quickly. This directly contradicted her first message and the tone suggested that I’d offended her. I fired back a quick apology and reiterated that I would love to hear from her when they’re ready.

Did I screw up? Is “suspended” a dirty word? It seemed accurate in response to her first message. Do I need to do more to fix this?

“Suspended” isn’t a dirty word and I doubt you offended the recruiter or misstepped. She was simply clarifying that they’re not stopping recruitment; it’s just slowing way down / is on the back burner as a priority right now. There’s nothing to fix; all is fine.