Ask a Manager

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

1. Is swiping on a coworker on a dating app grounds for an HR meeting?

Asking for a friend: They absent-mindedly swiped on a coworker in a dating app (whom they asked out once two years earlier). Said coworker was uncomfortable with that and went to HR, and they all had a sit-down about leaving said coworker alone.

I am all for not harassing people you work with romantically, but I am also conflicted — is swiping right on a coworker on Bumble or Tinder grounds for an HR intervention?

They are both on a dating app, after all — a place where you are opening up yourself to these kinds of interactions explicitly. And then the interaction has to be mutual anyway — both people need to “initiate” conversation here, without knowing if the other person has done so. (Apparently in this case their coworker was paying for premium rights to see who was swiping on them, and spoke with HR without initiating.)

Dating apps also location-based, and so a lot of coworkers might show up there. Having worked at a 500-person office, I probably have swiped on several without realizing! A lot of people also use these by quickly swiping, not necessarily making a researched decision every time.

I might be utterly off-base here, but I want to be sure not to alienate people I work with. What would be the correct etiquette here?

This doesn’t sound like someone who reported a coworker to HR simply for swiping right on them on a dating app. Her perspective is likely that the coworker had already asked her out, she’d said no, now he’s making another overture, and they work together so it’s extra aggravating that he wasn’t respecting the original no.

It could still have been overkill to involve HR — but so much of this depends on how he handled the original rejection and how he’s treated her since then.

Related:
I matched with a coworker on a dating site
if you’re thinking of asking a coworker on a date…

2. Our bosses gave a perk to their spouses instead of to other employees

Our company is very small, three joint owners and three employees.

Our company has a business relationship with another company, and as a result they’ve offered tickets to the F1 Grand Prix in our area this year. Both bosses immediately planned to use the tickets on both themselves (this is understandable) and then both of their spouses. My question is about the latter — is it actually appropriate for them to share this perk with spouses instead of employees? It just struck me as a bit weird and self-interested for the initial instinct to be to share it with their spouses, who are unaffiliated with the company in any way outside of being their romantic partners, instead of with the very few employees they actually have.

I would love to have some insight on whether or not this is appropriate or normal behavior, as I don’t know if I should speak up and say that it bothered me that romantic partners who don’t work here were going to be seeing perks that employees are not.

It’s definitely a thing that happens with certain perks. It varies by company, but in a lot of workplaces there isn’t an automatic assumption that this sort of perk will distributed equitably, or that executives’ spouses won’t be included ahead of employees. You see it particularly with tickets, but you also see it with dinners out and trips (where spouses might be included too)

I don’t think it’s an outrage that warrants complaining about it, but it’s also not particularly gracious of the owners, and it’s something really good leaders wouldn’t do. Good leaders see that kind of gift as an opportunity to reward people, build morale, and make them feel like a valued part of the team (and that’s true even if the tickets were specifically a thank-you to the owners for choosing to give their business to the other company).

But while I don’t think you should complain, per se, there’s also nothing wrong with asking if employees can be included the next time something like that is offered.

3. My manager is from a country at war with mine

I am living in Europe but I have a lot of family in Ukraine. My job just hired a new line manager for my team, an external hire. Today was their first day on the job and we had a team meeting where we were all being introduced for the first time. After a round of introductions, they said, “I noticed that there are multiple people from Ukraine on the team. I am from Russia, I wonder how that will go.” My internal reaction was, “Yes, I wonder as well, and I really wish this wasn’t sprung up on me in a team meeting.” Obviously, we should all treat people as individuals, I don’t know what their position is on the war, and good for them for noticing the inherent trickiness of the situation. But they didn’t follow up with any explicit comments about what they believe, and even just that makes me worried about how I’d have to phrase things about them. My job has been happy with my performance so far but there has been periodic impact on my day-to-day work when family and friends had various losses, injuries, and close calls that affected me as well, and I generally gave context to my manager about what was going on without thinking too hard about how to phrase it.

Do you think my company should have done anything differently (other than not hiring a good candidate, which seems unreasonable)? Are there things that I should consider for dealing with this? In the past all my managers checked in with me on how things were going and while I don’t rant about my personal life, I haven’t had to worry about saying something controversial before, I guess I had the good luck of working with people who had similar views on political events that affected me personally.

It would have been odd if your company had done anything differently. People aren’t their countries, and there’s no reason to assume anything either way about the new hire’s stance; the only thing it makes sense to assume is that they’ll behave professionally no matter what political differences they might have with team mates (on anything, not just this). If that turns out not to be the case, that’s something you’d need to escalate, but that would be an aberration, not something anyone should go in expecting will happen.

The new hire’s comment was a little awkward, but it actually doesn’t reveal much and likely was borne out of feeling awkward about things themself. It wouldn’t have been appropriate for them to follow up with their stance on the war; that actually could have been really inappropriate.

I think, too, that if you’re affected by something affecting your family’s safety, it’s still fine to share that! It’s likely to go better if everyone proceeds from the assumption that all involved are decent people with empathy for others. If that turns out not to be the case, you’ll find out soon enough (and is something you’d need to escalate, per my first paragraph), but don’t ascribe that to them prematurely.

I hope your family is safe.

4. How to say “this was your idea” to my manager

I have a new skip-level boss who is making me insane. There are a number of ways she’s not good at managing and working for her is incredibly unpleasant, so I’m trying to get out even though I love my job. In the meantime, I need to survive a recurring dynamic.

“Andrea” will tell me to create a spreadsheet showing X, Y, and Z information. All this is available in our reporting system, but she wants it in a spreadsheet format. Then she’ll tell me to add on A and B. This will take me days to create. I’ll send it to her, and then wake up with comments all over the sheet: “Why are we reporting on B?” “How did you define X?” “What is this A column?”

The answer to all of those is… you asked me for it. You told me you wanted to see B so there it is. X is defined as exactly what you told me to pull. Column A is the column that you said you needed. I feel like either I’m stupid because I can’t understand why this keeps happening, or she’s forgetting what she asked for. She is unpleasant and does not take feedback well, so I am very hesitant to name the dynamic; my direct manager is kind but not able to shield me.

What’s a professional script for “I have no idea why you wanted this, but you asked for it so I gave it to you” when I get asked about things like this?

Start preempting the question when you initially send the work. For example, when you send her a spreadsheet with edits she requested, write this in the email: “You asked me yesterday to add A and B to the C spreadsheet, so I’ve done that here. A is defined as ___ and B is defined as ___. Please let me know if you want me to do it differently.”

If you miss the chance to do that and end up getting questioned later about why you did something she asked you to do, it’s fine to say, “My understanding from your feedback on Tuesday was that you wanted me to add A and B. Did I misunderstand what you were looking for?” Say this neutrally, like you’re genuinely curious if you misunderstood something, not with a subtext of “how do you not remember this?”

5. Should I list myself as currently employed?

I am/was a federal probationary employee (i.e., I have less than a year of government service). Just over a month ago, I was swept up in the mass termination of probationary employees across the federal government. This week, I was reinstated as part of a temporary restraining order in a court case challenging the legality of that mass termination. However, in the intervening month, my entire unit was subjected to a reduction in force (also of questionable legality and about to face legal challenge). Therefore, when I was reinstated, I was immediately placed on paid administrative leave, which will continue until the reduction in force takes full effect and I am completely separated from federal service (in the absence of legal intervention).

I am of course applying for other jobs, but now that I’ve been reinstated, I don’t know how to represent or how much to explain my current circumstances in application documents. How do I list my employment status while I’m on paid administrative leave? Do I just use “present” as the end date of my government service and leave it at that? Or should I list the date I was terminated, which was the last time I did any substantive work as a government employee? If I list myself as presently employed, do I need to explain in my cover letter why I’m looking for alternate employment after less than a year on the job? Or do employers understand why federal employees are all searching for jobs at this point, regardless of their exact circumstances?

You’re still legally an employee there, so go ahead and list your employment as “to present” (so “May 2024 – present” or whatever). That’s reasonable to do regardless, and it’s especially reasonable given how much uncertainty is surrounding all of this.

You don’t need to explain the situation in your cover letter — hiring managers know — but it’s also fine to allude to it in a single sentence if you want to; just don’t use any more cover letter real estate on it than that. (More about that here.)

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

1. Should I say something about past allegations against a colleague?

I started a new position about six months ago, working with partner organizations across the state on community projects. On a recent call, I was surprised to see someone I’ll call Brad.

I knew Brad from my time teaching in a different city, where he was an activist in the reproductive health rights space. A few years ago, Brad had to leave that work and relocate after being accused of grooming minors. Two friends who work in that space told me about it at the time.

Now, Brad is working in a different community-focused role, and while it’s unrelated to reproductive health, they are still in a position of influence. My role is to provide technical assistance to help make a project feasible for the community Brad works with. Brad is actively facilitating conversations with our partners. It feels surreal to be in meetings with someone who had to leave their previous job due to allegations of being a sexual predator. However, everything I know is secondhand. I don’t know if Brad’s new role involves minors.

Do I have an obligation to say something to my boss? Should I bring this up, even if I don’t have firsthand knowledge? Or is this one of those situations where I just have to compartmentalize and move on?

I don’t think you have an obligation to say something to your boss since (a) Brad isn’t working for your organization and (b) you heard about the allegations secondhand. But I don’t think think you’d be wrong to have a quiet word with your boss about it either — framed as, “I only have secondhand knowledge of this and no idea if his current job involves minors, but given that minors were involved previously, I felt uncomfortable keeping it to myself. Is this something you think we need to do anything with?”

2. HR unilaterally changed our performance reviews

During our most recent performance review period, managers were told that they had to score 75% of employees as 3s on the overall 1 through 5 rating scale (5 being the best), with the remainder split between 1/2/4/5s. Apparently, despite this, there were too many high scores given so HR went in and — seemingly randomly since they most certainly don’t have insight into people’s day-to-day performance — knocked people down to 3s. They also asked managers to change their comments on the reviews of people who had this happen to reflect the new scores. I was among this lucky demoted group, and since confirming that neither my manager or grandboss had any input on this change, I’ve felt increasingly frustrated by this situation since it has the potential to affect future promotions as well as this year’s salary increase and bonus.

Ranting about it to a friend who works in a different industry I found that his company had done the same thing! Is this a new trend? Can you think of any way to push back against this? One further complication is that it’s unclear if HR realizes that everyone knows what they did (a lot of managers were not happy with the changes).

This is not a new trend, but it’s a ridiculous practice. There have always been companies that insist on a certain distribution of performance evaluation ratings, which has always caused problems for managers and teams whose performance didn’t line up with the required distribution of scores. But the idea of HR randomly changing ratings and then demanding managers rewrite their comments to justify those ratings is an extra level of ridiculous; typically they’d just tell managers that they need to change their ratings and leave it to them to decide how to do that.

I do wonder whether it’s true that HR chose the new ratings randomly or whether it was based on anything (including conversations with managers). Managers wouldn’t necessarily disclose the latter to you, and might even prefer to let HR take the blame.

As for pushing back — if you’ve had glowing feedback all year (especially if it’s documented, but even if it’s not) and/or if you’ve met/exceeded the goals that were laid out for you, you could certainly highlight that and ask how your rating squares with your performance and the feedback you’ve received from your manager. They might not care, but it’s a reasonable avenue to pursue.

3. Do I have to announce my pregnancy at work?

Would it be extremely weird if I just didn’t widely announce my pregnancy at work? My boss and grandboss know, and a few other individuals I chose to tell, but I just really don’t want to make a big email announcement. I have a lot of anxiety about this pregnancy and it feels like a jinx (even though logically I know it’s not). But people will be able to tell I’m pregnant soon. Will it be weird if I go around with an obviously pregnant belly without ever having said anything? Am I inviting gossip and/or nosy questions? Do I just need to get over myself and send the darn email?

In some office cultures it might be a little weird. That doesn’t mean you have to announce if you don’t want to, though, and it sounds like the people who need to know already do.

For what it’s worth, in the offices where it would be unusual, I do think you could be inviting more speculation and gossip by not sharing it with the people you work with the mostly closely. Again, you don’t have to if you don’t want to, obviously it’s no one’s business, etc. etc., but realistically on closer-knit teams, people may notice and wonder if they missed an announcement. In fact, an advantage of sending a brief announcement is that if you want to, you could explicitly say, “I’m nervous about the pregnancy and would prefer not to be asked about it at work, thanks for understanding.”

Related:
my employee didn’t tell anyone she was pregnant until she was about to give birth

4. Was this training’s explanation of discrimination correct?

I had to take a training on workplace discrimination and harassment that was mandatory for all employees at my company. As part of the training, we were asked a series of hypothetical questions and had to answer whether they constituted discrimination or harassment. One example involved a graphic design company that had a project to design a logo for a football team, and gave the project to a male employee over a female one because “men know more about football then women.” The explanation given was that it was discrimination because whether someone knows about football is not relevant to their job performance.

It seems to me that if you’re designing a logo for a football team, your knowledge of football is indeed relevant to your ability to do so. The issue here is that they assumed the male employee must know more about football than the female employee solely because of his gender. Therefore, it does indeed constitute discrimination but the provided explanation is wrong. Whose explanation is correct?

Yours. It’s illegal discrimination to assign a project based on gender (“men know more about football than women do”) but not to assign a project based on a specific person’s knowledge or interest (“Lucas knows the most about football”).

Whoever presented this training (a) doesn’t have a good grasp of the material and (b) probably got sidetracked by the gendered nature of the sport and hopefully would recognize that “I’m assigning X to Lucas because he knows a ton about frogs” would be fine.

5. Are non-competes still legal?

I had a recruiter reach out to me for a job at a direct competitor. I’m not looking to leave, but I also mentioned that I have a non-compete.

He told me those “aren’t a thing anymore” and it wouldn’t hold up in court anyway. But I’ve been tracking them and saw that the FTC was trying to pass a law in September to stop non-competes nationally but it was being challenged by two different Texas courts and now the law is in limbo.

The recruiter said I was wrong, so I wanted to ask you since I know you have reported on them in the past. Can you give us an update? Again, I’m not looking to leave, but if I was I wouldn’t be comfortable with “it wouldn’t hold up in court.”

Yes, non-competes are still legal at the federal level.

In April 2024, the Federal Trade Commission announced it would ban them for most U.S. workers, saying they stifle wages. But before that could take effect, two federal courts (one in Texas and one in Florida) issued injunctions blocking it, saying the agency lacked the authority to issue the rule. The FTC was originally expected to appeal those rulings, but that’s much less likely to happen under the new administration.

In addition, in 2023 the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) general counsel issued a memo stating that non-competes violate the National Labor Relations Act in most circumstances. However, that general counsel has been removed by the new administration, and that directive is very likely to be rescinded.

So for the time being, non-competes remain legal federally.

However, four states ban non-competes completely (California, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Oklahoma), and 33 more plus Washington, D.C. restrict them (generally via banning them for hourly wage workers or workers below a salary threshold).

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

1. Our board volunteer makes everyone’s jobs harder

I was recently made the chair of the board for a local community service group. The board receives money each year to buy supplies for community service events, but being on the board is a volunteer position (no one is getting paid). Basically, anyone who wants to be on the board can be because we really need the extra help. Historically, people have only been asked to step down if there is an ethical concern. The parent organization that provides funds does not provide rules or guidance on staffing, only on how we spend the money.

We have one board member who is making everyone else’s jobs harder through no fault of his own. John has been the secretary for a very long time, and he’s in charge of scheduling meetings and taking notes (he doesn’t contribute to event planning or anything else).

John is a very kind, elderly gentleman who struggles with technology. He will take a week or more to schedule a meeting when I could schedule it myself in five minutes. This is an issue when an urgent problem or opportunity pops up that requires a board vote. We’ve been trying to use OneNote to track meeting minutes and event information, but John isn’t comfortable using it (he will only work in Word or on paper). He’s hard of hearing, so he can’t hear what anyone says in the meetings. We end up pausing every few minutes to tell him exactly what to write down (costing us ~20% of our meeting time). At this point, everyone is doing more work just so John can keep his position.

I’m not sure how to deal with this. On one hand, he is objectively hurting our outcomes and making more work for an already stretched-thin team. On the other hand, our organization frowns upon turning down volunteers and John loves being on the board because he’s “lonely and gets to talk to people at the meetings.”

Should I act like this is a paid position (set a performance improvement plan and ask him to step down if he ultimately can’t meet expectations)? I wouldn’t be able to replace him; I’d be eliminating the position entirely. I also worry that excluding him would be akin to discrimination based on age or disability (which is important to me even if this group isn’t bound by employment laws). I also wouldn’t have anyone to replace him with, so we’d just be getting rid of the position entirely.

Or should I try to find a different role/task he can reasonably complete without impacting the rest of us? That feels wrong too, like I’d be infantilizing him by keeping him busy but not letting him do anything meaningful. Is there a third option here?

A performance improvement plan would be overkill in a volunteer position like this.

But you definitely can’t spend a fifth of your meeting time coaching John on what to write in the notes. And if you’re already hurting for volunteers, you really shouldn’t risk making people not want to go to your meetings.

Can John stay on the board without being the secretary? Can he just be a board member who provides input into the direction of the organization without having a specific task list that affects other people?

If not, then at a minimum, it sounds like you need to just tell him that the board is moving to OneNote and no longer needs him to take notes. If he pushes back, be matter-of-fact about why: “We’re spending a lot of time in every meeting discussing what should be written down, and OneNote will take care of it all without discussion, which we need because people are stretched for time. So it’s going to be OneNote from here on out.” Or, “We’re going to try out OneNote for the next two meetings and see if it works.”

You could be pretty blunt about the meeting scheduling: “We’ve been waiting a week or more to get meetings scheduled, and we need that to happen faster. It’s something I can do myself very quickly, the same day it comes up, so my plan is to take over scheduling them unless you are up for getting it done the same day it’s requested?”

The other option is to just lay out what needs to change and let him decide if he’s up for it or not: “We need the secretary to do XYZ, which is different in ABC ways from what’s happening now. Do you want to stay in the role knowing the requirements will be changing in that way, or do you want to take a more of a general board member role where you’re not responsible for XYZ anymore?” If he says he wants to remain in the role but you still don’t see the changes you asked for, at that point you’d revert to the steps above.

2. Is it unrealistic to expect a raise while you’re on a PIP?

I recently had my annual review with my boss, and I was marked as “below expectations.” I expected it as I had been put on a performance improvement plan (PIP) due to “communication issues.” Quick backstory on the PIP is that I am the kind of person who if you assign me something, I will get it done, then update you, whereas my boss is more of the “update me as you go along” kind of person. Different communication styles, I get it, and I’m more introverted and task-focused, which caused me to often forget about communication updates to the stakeholders, which can definitely be improved upon. While I felt the PIP was unreasonable as I was still producing results, it was not totally out of line. I fully expect to pass this PIP, and my boss also communicated that during our review.

Back to the review: my boss told me that I would not be getting a raise, as it is company policy that anyone on PIP will not get a raise. Fair enough, again not a good policy, but sure, I get it. However, I argued that in the past year, my roles and responsibilities had increased drastically, including taking on what is traditionally in my industry a complete other person’s job scope. It is a small-ish company, so I understood it as a logical extension of my work. (The PIP was not a result of me being unable to handle the additional responsibilities.) That was in March of last year. Since then, the company has grown in leaps and bounds and hired much more back end staff. I felt that if I was to continue doing both teapot sets of work, I would need to be paid more. His counter was that anyone on a PIP would not be entitled to a raise.

Is it unfair to expect a raise to reflect my new expanded job scope, even though I am on a PIP? I argued with him for about 10 minutes over this, and his counter was still that last statement above. I felt like I was talking in circles.

Yeah, you’re not going to get a raise while you’re on a PIP, at least not more than a cost-of-living increase at most. Raises are recognition that you’re now contributing at a higher level than when your salary was last set, and if you’re performing below expectations for the job (and by definition with a PIP, the issues are serious enough that you could be let go), very few employers are going to increase your salary in the middle of that (again, excluding COLAs).

The problem is that a year ago your company added significantly to your work without compensating you for it. Maybe that was more reasonable than it sounds on the surface — you can have a job composed of two separate areas of work and still have them be one reasonable full-time job at the original salary. Or maybe it’s unreasonable; your company wouldn’t be the first to pile extra responsibilities on someone without paying them at market rate (or what they would have to pay someone for the same job if they hired for it externally). But you’re not likely to be successful in arguing that while you’re on a PIP.

3. Public-facing employees are upset that other employees do work outside our office

I work for a large educational institution. During Covid, we all worked remotely without issue. Even after returning to the office, there was some flexibility; as long as our work was getting done and our supervisors approved, we could work remotely as needed.

Recently, with a change in leadership, an email was sent stating that everyone must be present in person unless they have explicit approval from their boss. This has created a toxic work environment. Most of our clerical staff have always been required to work in person because they are public-facing or their roles demand it. However, many of us have jobs that require us to be in the field, visiting other sites and meeting with stakeholders. The issue is that the clerical staff is now monitoring when people come and go, leading to resentment, tattling, and unnecessary tension. HR has been unhelpful in clarifying that different roles have different expectations, and the clerical staff feels it’s unfair that not everyone has to be in the office all day. To make matters worse, some employees are now misusing their access to our management system to check who has recorded an absence or who they believe is simply not in the office. They fail to recognize that this is an invasion of privacy — people’s absences and their reasons should not be office gossip.

How can we address this growing hostility and get leadership to acknowledge the differences in job responsibilities while also ensuring privacy is respected?

Wait, the clerical staff is upset not that other people at working from home but that other people are out of the office to visit other sites and meet with stakeholders? That is … a weird new twist on this.

That said, there’s not a lot that you as non-management can do about it. You can point out the tensions to your boss (and maybe HR if they’re competent). You can make a point of being more specific than just saying you or someone else will be out of the office and instead say “I’m meeting with a client” or “Jane is doing a site visit” or so forth. You can counter the comments when you hear them (“part of her job is going to clients’ sites”). You can also just ignore it; internally roll your eyes and figure it’s not your problem to handle as long as it’s not directly interfering with your ability to get your job done. The last one is likely your best option; you might get the most relief from realizing you can’t fix it and don’t need to fix it.

But behind that, what you’re describing is a significant culture problem, and one that requires intervention from management to resolve it. If they don’t care to do that for whatever reason, that’s on them.

That said, if there are specific violations of privacy that you can cite (like someone’s medical information being accessed/shared), you should definitely escalate that.

If I’ve misunderstood and the resentment is actually about people who have their managers’ permission to work from home — not just working from non-home locations — the advice above still applies.

Related:
should I get rid of remote work because our in-office staff thinks it’s unfair?

4. My coworkers tune out so much background noise that it worries me

We have a hybrid office. Some people work with headphones on, others don’t, but many lose all awareness of everything else while working. I know that it’s common in offices for us to be completely focused on our work, but surely we should remain aware of where we are?

We’ve had people be surprised at things happening right next to them. We’ve even had them unaware that we’re talking about them while saying their name out loud. The worst example came when I went out of the room to move things upstairs, always a 10-20 minute process each week. A manager then asked me if I could move things upstairs, having not noticed that I had left the room, done the task, and come back as usual. This manager’s desk was right next to the door!

I’m worried that this lack of situational awareness will lead to more trouble than mild surprise. What if there was an emergency? We haven’t had a fire drill for a long time, I don’t know how quickly they’d react. What about verbal warnings; would they hear the security guards warning them to evacuate? What can I do? What should I do?

You don’t need to do anything! It’s very normal for people to adjust to office noise by learning to block it out so they can concentrate; that’s how they’re still able to do work that requires focus. In all but the most extreme cases, their brains will still recognize and respond to fire alarms, shouts to evacuate, and other noises outside the drone of more routine background noise.

5. I got my years of employment wrong in an interview

I just had an interview that I thought went fairly well. However, immediately upon leaving, I realized I said I held a position eight years when it was really six; it was an honest mistake, my bad-at-math brain just visualized “2014-2020” in my head and did the math wrong. But I’m worried that they will think I intentionally lied. Should I include a clarification in my thank-you email?

Sure. It’s unlikely to be a big deal, but on the off chance they did notice it and wondered about it, it would be fine to include a very brief mention in your thank-you note — something like, “Also, right after I left our meeting I realized I said I was at Oatmeal Village for eight years; in fact, it was six, and I didn’t want to leave that uncorrected.”