Ask a Manager

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

1. My boss says my salary research is wrong because our benefits are so great

I recently received a promotion with a significant increase in job responsibilities and found myself negotiating salary for the first time in my career. My state requires salary ranges to be posted with job descriptions, so I have a good idea what other companies in our industry are offering for my role and my years of experience, and I asked for a similar amount, about 10% higher than what I was offered. My manager wanted to know how I came up with the new number, so I pointed out these job postings. She responded that the total compensation I was being offered, including benefits, was already equivalent to the amount I was asking for, so there was no need to increase the offered salary amount.

I understand where she’s coming from; we have very generous benefits, including regular bonuses and multiple reimbursement programs for a variety of qualified expenses, and total compensation is a way to quantify those extra dollars. But in my mind, these benefits are not the same as guaranteed pay. Bonuses are dependent on the company’s profits, and I won’t receive the reimbursement funds unless I incur the relevant expenses. Not to mention that the market rates I’m researching are base salary and I don’t have any way of knowing what the dollar value of another company’s benefits would be for a more equivalent comparison.

Is this normal to consider total compensation when negotiating a salary? Am I too focused on the base salary number? I generally consider benefits as more of a happiness boost than a monetary boost (and this is the first time I’ve had benefits that result in me receiving cash payouts), so maybe I need to adjust my mindset. But I feel like my manager is using the company’s benefits package to justify giving me a salary that is below market rate. I’m wondering how I can approach this better at my next salary review.

Ha, no, the value of your benefits package isn’t supposed to be used like that. Your boss is comparing salary plus benefits at your current company to salary alone at another; it’s apples and oranges (or cash and scones?). For all we know, the other companies’ benefits packages could be the same or better than your company’s is! It sure is convenient for her to use that to swat away the comparisons, but it’s not at all accurate to do that.

Bonuses could be an exception to that if your bonuses are extremely reliable (although still not ideal for the reasons you point out), but “we reimburse a lot of expenses that you may or may not incur”? No.

The next time this comes up, you could say, “I appreciate our benefits, but ultimately salary is the most important piece of compensation for me, and that’s what I’m focused on.” You could add, “I can’t include the value of our benefits package without comparing it to the value of theirs.” (And really, she’s practically begging you to go out and learn more about what the competition is offering.)

Related:
can I include the value of my benefits when I talk about my current salary?

2. Can you call out sick for flight anxiety?

This is a hypothetical, but it almost happened. I just had a weekend social obligation in another city that required two flights each way. (These were domestic flights within the U.S.; my local airport doesn’t have direct connections to the destination city.)

At the gate for the first flight back home, I was feeling very anxious about the flight and almost bailed to rent a car and drive back. If I had done this, I would’ve had to miss one day of work.

Ironically, that flight ended up being super smooth. But if I had gone with my idea, would I have legitimately been able to call out with a sick day, on the grounds that flight anxiety is anxiety and therefore a mental illness?

In theory, in a perfect world where everyone understands anxiety and there’s no stigma around mental health? Sure. It should qualify.

In this world, though, the wiser move in a lot of organizations would have been to just say your travel arrangements got messed up, you were having to rent a car to get back, and you’d need to use an additional day of vacation to do it.

3. My boss won’t let me send client reports until he reads them, but he never reads them

My boss is generally fantastic and supports my professional growth and allows me flexibility in working hours and leeway to manage my clients as best I see fit. However, he has one frustrating area of micromanagement that is causing me workflow issues and I don’t know how to move forward.

Our organization’s clients receive quarterly reports on the performance of their products, which I spend about a day each quarter compiling. My boss insists on seeing the reports before I send them to clients. This is despite me never having an error that needs correcting in the five years I’ve worked here.

The issue is that he is swamped and it takes him forever to get round to checking and approving the reports. Currently, he hasn’t yet looked at my 2024 Q4 reports, and the Q1 reports for 2025 are now also waiting for him to check. When I finish a report, I email him with a link to where it’s saved. I remind him about checking the reports at least twice a week in our standing meetings, and he says he’ll do it that day but gets distracted by more urgent priorities and the client reports get pushed to the bottom of the pile. My clients have been asking for the 2024 Q4 reports for a couple months now and I have been giving them vague promises of “soon.”

Telling clients that the reports are ready but I’m not allowed to send them until I get my manager’s approval makes me sound incompetent. However, being months late sending the reports also seems unprofessional. Every time I finish the quarterly reports, I ask if I can send them to clients, and every time he says “I want to do a quick read-through” and then sits on the reports for months. Do you have any advice on how I could do things differently to get a quicker response? Going to his boss feels like a nuclear option as they’re very senior. I don’t want to stop doing the reports as the clients like them and I find it a useful exercise to see how the products are performing. I just want to send them out reasonably soon after the quarter ends!

Have you laid out for your boss that clients keep asking for the reports and you’re concerned it looks bad to keep delaying and then never send them? If not, do that! And then say, “Since I’ve never had an error in the reports in the five years you’ve been looking them over, could our system be that you’ll have a week to look them over, but then I’ll send them at that point if I haven’t heard back from you? I could give you a heads-up the day before. Otherwise they’re not getting to clients in enough time for them to be useful, and I worry we’re making ourselves look bad by delaying them when people keep asking for them.”

If he doesn’t like that, could you pull the latest report out in your standing meeting and ask him to go over it with you right then and there so you can put it to bed?

4. I flamed out at my last job, but there were mitigating circumstances — can I apply again?

I worked for two years at one of the largest and best employers in my field. During my first year, I did well: received good feedback from managers, got good reviews, had my contract renewed for a second year. During my second year, things took a turn: I struggled, got assigned a new manager in case that would help, was put on a PIP, and ultimately let go.

The thing is, there were mitigating circumstances. Starting right at the year mark, I had a series of crises: three pregnancy losses, a surgery, and then a flare-up of a chronic condition so severe that I had to take leave to get treatment. Needless to say, this drastically impacted my work performance, and though my bosses knew what was going on and gave me some grace, I wasn’t able to do enough to mitigate the damage, and they let me go.

The good news is, I did get treatment — and what’s more, got an actual diagnosis (which I’d never had before) and got medicated, also for the first time. The difference is night and day. I didn’t realize how much my chronic condition had been impacting my work performance until suddenly it wasn’t any more. In my new job, I’m excelling again, and it feels easy in a way it never has before.

I’d like to apply for a role with this org again. I know from reading your site that the phrasing “had some health challenges that have since been dealt with” can go a long way towards explaining resume gaps. But as I understand it, that’s usually done in interviews. Is there a similar way to professionally bring up this situation in my cover letter as a way of basically saying, “Yes, I know my records show I was let go, but the situation was very circumstantial and truly won’t happen again”? Having been a hiring manager, I understand not wanting to take a risk on a candidate with a poor internal record, but as an applicant, I’d love to be considered for the role given that I’m now in a very different life situation and the difficult circumstances are unlikely to happen again.

It’s pretty hard to apply at an organization that fired you for poor performance (despite the mitigating circumstances!) so I wouldn’t rely on a cold application and an explanation in your cover letter. Instead, can you get in touch with your last manager there and share the situation? You don’t need to get into private health details but a general description of what happened, that it’s now resolved, and how well you’ve been doing since might go a long way. You can then say you’d love to come back but understand the previous situation might be an obstacle to that, and do they have any advice on whether, given the circumstances, there might be a way to be considered again? They might or might not be able to help, but that’s going to give you a better shot than just applying cold will do (and that manager will definitely be asked about you at some point if you did get considered, so you might as well talk with them and get them briefed ahead of time anyway). Good luck!

5. Employer wants to photocopy my Social Security card

As part of a starting a recent job, I went through the usual onboarding processes. I’m aware the purpose of the I-9 form is to verify eligibility to work in the United States. My understanding is, and always has been, that presenting these ID’s is sufficient to meet the requirements of the I-9.

Recently, I was asked to provide a photocopy of my Social Security card. The HR person was vague when questioned, only saying, “For company security reasons.” They apparently keep a filing cabinet with these. This is questionable to me and possibly a security risk. Is it legal for a company to request and keep photocopies of sensitive documents such as these?

Yes, it’s legal and not uncommon. Many employers keep copies so that if they’re ever audited, they can show that they did in fact check your documents and record the information correctly. The government’s guidance to employers on this says, “You may make copies (or electronic images) of the documentation you reviewed, but must return original documentation to the employee. If you make copies, they should be made consistently for all new hires and reverified employees, regardless of national origin, citizenship, or immigration status, or you may violate anti-discrimination laws.” They’re also required to keep the copies as secure as the I-9 itself.

For what it’s worth, a photocopy of your Social Security card doesn’t really make you more vulnerable to identity theft than the I-9 itself does, since an identity thief only needs your card number, not an image of the actual card (and that number gets recorded on the I-9).

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

1. My boss leads the worst staff meetings ever

Every month my boss leads an all-staff meeting, and it is awful. Normally he is a pretty good boss, and I enjoy working with him. But this meeting is regularly 1.5-2 hours long and largely irrelevant to half the staff because it is mostly geared towards one team (out of 4). My boss also tries to make these meetings “fun” by asking people for personal pictures — at one meeting he showed pictures for 45 minutes before even getting to the business/informational part, during the height of our busy season. I manage a team of 10 people and regularly receive feedback from them that they find the meetings tedious and uninformative and my boss only gives out praise to one team (not my team).

I have tried speaking with him about this, mostly related to the personal photos part, which I feel can get off the rails towards inappropriate. That went nowhere so I dropped it since I understand that it’s impossible to make a meeting relevant to every employee.

But recently other managers came to me with similar issues, and we decided to push back together. Another manager and I asked him for a meeting and presented some of the feedback we had received from our teams. We asked him to keep the meeting to an hour, present important information first, spread praise evenly between teams, and allow employees to opt out of the “fun” parts by having picture/story-sharing at the end. These changes would make a huge difference to most of the staff.

Unfortunately, this feedback was not well received, and the fallout has been rough. My boss told me that he spoke to other employees and they “love” the meetings and get a lot out of them (I assume this is from the team who regularly gets praise). He also said he wants the meetings to be about “culture” and not information because we are fully remote and don’t see each other often. He essentially blamed me and my team for not finding the meetings relevant. He suggested that I train them to share more in the meetings. I told him I am not willing to force people to share personal pictures/stories and that while culture is important, the most we can require from an employee is to be respectful and helpful. I was dismissed until we could go over this again.

At this point I don’t hold any hope he will change the meetings, but I would like him to understand I’m not going to force my team to participate beyond attending. I’m at a loss on what to do.

The changes you asked for were very reasonable!

But he doesn’t agree with you, and it doesn’t sound like he’s going to. This might just be what you’re stuck with (as it sounds like you’ve concluded, too).

However — you said “other managers,” plural, came to you with similar concerns, but it was just you and one other who met with your boss about this. If there are managers who haven’t yet addressed it with him directly, you should push them to. It’s possible that if he keeps hearing it from others, it’ll eventually get through.

But as for getting him to understand that you won’t force your team to participate beyond attending: is there any reason to assume he’s going to keep making an issue out of that? It sounds like he suggested they participate more, you said you won’t require that, and it ended there. I wouldn’t assume that part is going to keep coming up (especially since he didn’t raise it himself until you broached it).

2. Our old manager is constantly undermining our new manager

About a year ago, our manager (Veronica) moved to an adjacent department, and someone on our team was promoted to manager (Jane). Jane has a lot of very relevant experience and took the job mostly because nobody else wanted it, although she is qualified.

Veronica was an excellent manager and really helped improve our department. During the transition period, she still attended and ran all of our meetings. Well, a year later she is still doing that. If Jane says anything, Veronica immediately discredits what she says and/or speaks over her. I would say 30-50% of our meetings is Jane trying to get a word in and Veronica shutting her down or trying to make her look incompetent. At this point, the meetings are infuriating to attend and are completely unproductive.

If Jane goes on vacation, Veronica takes over even though we have a very competent assistant manager. She posts unnecessary announcements, meddles in our work, and speaks poorly about Jane during meetings. We also get emails from Veronica contradicting what Jane has told us to do. My coworker was once specifically told in writing to do something X way even if Jane tells her otherwise. The majority of the team has commiserated about how crazy this all is.

Jane is aware and is fed up. She thinks it’s ridiculous and embarrassing, but she is close to retirement so I think she’s just not up for fighting. She did recently mention that she had thought of bringing it up to their boss but isn’t sure how to approach the conversation. (They report to the same boss, who seems approachable although I have not had much one-to-one interaction with him.)

Is there anything I can do? If Veronica gives me direction contradicting what Jane says, I go to Jane, but other than that I am not sure what else can improve our crappy working environment.

Encourage Jane to bring it up with her boss! What you’re describing is ridiculous, and if her boss is at all decent, he’d want to know it’s going on so he can either intervene himself or coach Jane is how to shut it down. In fact, if he eventually does hear about it through sources other than Jane, he might be alarmed that she never told him it was happening.

You could also encourage Jane to tell Veronica that while she appreciated her help during the transition, she’s going to be running her team’s meetings herself now, thinks it’s causing confusion to have them both there, and will let her know if she ever needs to pull her in as a resource, but otherwise prefers to handle it independently from here. Ideally she’d also tell Veronica to stop trying to fill in for her when she’s out — that she has an assistant manager who will be running things, and she doesn’t want Veronica stepping on the assistant manager’s toes or undermining that person with the team.

But Jane really needs to tackle this herself; having someone else (you) alert her boss to the situation would risk reinforcing that the approach she’s taken thus far has been too passive.

3. Giving feedback as a project lead, not a manager

I am a project lead on a large team. I work on one specific project myself, and if anyone else on the team is also working on it, I’m involved and review their work. I have no managerial authority over them, and level-wise am either equal or slightly more senior. I have no problems giving feedback relating to the work itself, but I’m struggling to figure out how I should handle feedback that I think would normally come from a manager.

For example, people frequently come to me with problems without putting in any effort to fix it themselves first. If I was their direct manager, I’d have no problem pushing back on what they’ve tried first or directly setting the expectation that they should try to fix the problem before coming to me, but that seems maybe heavy-handed to do as just a project lead?

Another example is having to remind people multiple times to do tasks that I’ve already reminded them to do. Again, if I were their direct manager I’d have no issue addressing the pattern, but that feels like overstepping when I’m not their manager.

Am I off-base in thinking these are things I shouldn’t handle myself? And if not, would these types of things fall into the “not my business” bucket or the “escalate to manager” bucket?

You can definitely push back when people come to you with problems they haven’t tried to solve themselves first, even though you’re not their manager! One low-key way is to ask, every time, “What have you tried so far?” If you ask that every time, most people will figure out pretty quickly that they’re supposed to be doing that … and if they don’t, it’s okay to say, “I’m always happy to help when you get stuck but I want you to learn this stuff, so try to ____ (check the training materials/check the documentation/look at how we did it in the past/whatever makes sense here) first, and then if you’re still not sure, come to me at that point.”

But having to remind people to do things is “escalate to manager” territory; that’s a performance issue that their manager should be aware of. However, before you do that, try saying, “I’ve noticed I’ve been having to remind you of tasks, which I shouldn’t be the one tracking. Can you come up with a system to make sure you catch all that stuff on your end first?” Then if it keeps happening, talk to your boss about it (at which point you can say that you’ve specifically flagged it, but to no avail).

4. Do I have to sign a non-disparagement agreement?

I work at a nonprofit that has been taken over by an appointee of the new administration, but I am not a federal employee. Our staff is being slashed, with employees who are excellent at their jobs and vital to basic operations being let go. The new administration is completely non-transparent — I am more likely to hear about staffing changes in the news than through internal channels, and they have otherwise been dishonest in both internal and external communications, particularly in regard to finances. I think it is only a matter of time before I am also axed.

Most employees being let go been required to sign non-disparagement agreements. I plan to fully disparage the new administration if let go, even if it means not getting severance. If I am called into HR to be fired or otherwise given notice, what options do I have? What consequences should I expect if I refuse to sign? Any advice to keep my wits about me in the moment?

It’s very typical to be asked to sign a non-disparagement agreement in return for severance (along with a general release of any legal claims). The thinking is they don’t want to give you money they don’t need to give you if won’t agree not to badmouth them in the future. It’s a way for them to extract some advantage from the severance agreement for themselves.

You can decline to sign, but it will almost certainly mean you don’t get severance. There aren’t really other consequences, though! You can simply say, “I’m not comfortable agreeing not to speak publicly about what’s happening, so I won’t be signing.” (Or you can be even vaguer and say you’re not comfortable signing without specifying why, or say nothing at all and see if they even ask.) It’s unlikely to be a big deal; they’ll just make sure you understand that you won’t be receive severance if you don’t sign, you’ll confirm that you understand that, and that should be that.

It’s possible they’ll think you’re not signing because you plan to sue for something, and if they have any reason to think you have fodder for that (such as a plausible discrimination claim), they might offer you more severance to try to incentivize you to sign. Or they might not; just know that’s possible and don’t be thrown off if they do.

You can also ask for time to look over the agreement and think about it; that’s normal, and they won’t pressure you to sign on the spot.

Disparage away!

5. Is it OK to say my coworker is on maternity leave?

Many of my coworkers are currently out on maternity or paternity leave. When I follow up on outstanding/ongoing work on their behalf, I state in the email that the other person is out for a few months and I will be helping them out. This inevitably elicits the response, “I hope they are okay.” Is it okay for me to specify that they are out on maternity or paternity leave? Or is that an invasion of privacy?

Obviously, the people they work with most often and the people in our department know why they are out, but due to the nature of the job, we are in touch with many people on a semi-regular or an infrequent basis.

Generally most people are comfortable with it being known they’re on parental leave, but it’s not impossible that someone might prefer it not be shared. One way to know for sure is to check their out-of-office message. If it’s stated in there, it’s definitely okay for you to share that information too. Otherwise, if you’re unsure you can always check with their manager — “is it okay for me to share with clients and others that Jane is on maternity leave, when explaining why I’m stepping in to handle something?”

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

1. My promotion was canceled because of budget … but I’m still doing the work

I’m an employee at a university paid through federal funding. Last month, my manager submitted a promotion for me. After some back and forth, it was approved all the way up and down the chain by everyone and just waiting for the last signature to be finalized. At the last second, two days before the deadline, upper management said that due to funding uncertainty the promotion was cancelled. Unfortunately, I don’t expect this uncertainty to resolve any time soon, so who knows when that promotion will actually go through.

The main problem is, I was doing work at this higher level in order to demonstrate that I was ready for promotion, and now that I know it’s not coming, I’m not particularly interested in doing that high level work anymore. It’s one thing to hear that you aren’t getting a promotion early on, but this has been in discussion for six months and I’m pretty upset that it was cancelled at the last possible second. I would prefer to go back to doing individual contributor work. Another factor is that although there are several people with informal “lead” titles on my team, I don’t have one, despite doing the same level work.

How can I pull back on doing extra work without looking unprofessional and salty? Should I ask for a “lead” title, which is somewhat meaningless, but at least would look good on my resume since I don’t have the higher position? I am also concerned about getting laid off, so a lot of this stems from wanting to accurately represent my actual work on my resume!

You could say, “I understand the situation we’re in with funding, but I’ve been doing higher level work for six months specifically to earn the promotion. Since that’s been canceled, I need to pull my work back to the level I’m being asked to stay at.”

This can be tricky, because a lot of organizations are big on “you have to do the work in order to move to the next level.” But you’ve been doing the work, and they’ve told you there’s no reward coming right now, so it’s not unreasonable to decide to recalibrate. That said, there can be advantages to your resume to continuing to do it anyway; if you’ll be able to put experience and accomplishments on your resume that you otherwise wouldn’t have, and which you can parlay into your next job somewhere else, you should factor that in, too. If that feels like an advantage you don’t want to give up, then you should definitely ask for the lead title, framing it as, “I’d at least like a lead title like others doing this level of work have, even if it’s not a formal promotion.”

Related:
can I refuse more work without a raise?

2. Do we have to let a problematic coworker join an allies group?

I’m a non-binary trans person (pronouns: they/them) at a workplace where non-binary people constitute about 1 in 10 people, which is great. But we have had some issues with misgendering from colleagues that I have spent a lot of time with HR on resolving (gender identity is a protected status in my state, in addition to nationwide). We’ve largely resolved the issue in that I’m no longer being actively misgendered at work, but the whole situation has left me slightly wary of the two main offenders.

I’m now going to be starting an LGBT + allies ERG (employee resource group) at my work, and I know at least one of the main offenders of the misgendering is likely to volunteer to join as an “ally” because she is, well, a bit oblivious. What do I say if she expresses interest? Including her would mean we wouldn’t be able to discuss as openly as I would like to because of her previous behavior but also I don’t want to have to deal with her consternation over being told no because as well intentioned as she may be, her actions speak way louder. What do I do?

Let her join. Legally, while ERGs can focus on supporting specific communities, they can’t limit participation based on demographics; they have to be open to all employees. If someone joins and is then disruptive, you can remove them from the group based on that behavior, but you can’t preemptively block them from joining.

And of course, best case scenario, she might learn something. That doesn’t address your concern about her presence inhibiting open discussion, but given the legal restraints you’re operating within, that’s likely the best way to look at it.

3. How to manage my boss’ calendar when I don’t have autonomy

I recently started a new job where a major part of my role involves admin support for an executive. I’m a highly organized person, but managing their calendar has been overwhelming, even for me.

One major challenge is that I don’t have autonomy over the calendar. My boss requires me to run every single meeting request by them before anything gets scheduled. There have been times when I knew they were free, so I took the initiative to schedule something, only to be reprimanded for not checking first. This creates a constant back-and-forth for every request, delaying my ability to confirm or decline meetings with others. It’s time-consuming, inefficient, and stresses my boss out when I spam them with meeting requests.

Complicating things further, my boss—while very senior—isn’t the CEO. There’s a group of four other top executives whose meeting requests always take priority. When any of them request time, my boss is expected to accommodate, even at short notice. The same applies to meetings with clients, which often come up without much warning and typically must be accepted.

This means that most meeting requests are either urgent or involve clients, making 80% of meetings essentially non-negotiable. Even when my boss tells me, “Don’t schedule anything for ____ time,” those holds often end up getting overridden because of higher-priority meetings. And I still have to check in every time, which adds to the overwhelming communication flow.

Because of all this, I find myself pinging my boss throughout the day with meeting requests, so much so that I worry I’m being annoying or redundant. I was hired to be a problem-solver and to make my boss’s life easier, but it feels like I’m just a middle-person in a never-ending scheduling maze.

I’m struggling with how to streamline this process without stepping out of bounds. I want to be proactive and take things off my boss’s plate, but I don’t have the authority or clarity to do that confidently. It’s discouraging, and I feel stuck.

Talk to your boss! Ask if they’re happy with you pinging them throughout the day or if it’s disruptive and they’d prefer something else. It might turn out that they’re fine with it and this is their preference — in which case, the challenge for you is to just work on getting comfortable with that. It’s also possible that as you work together longer, you’ll develop more of a sense of how they do/don’t want to schedule things, they’ll see that, and they’ll let you do it more autonomously. But that may just take time.

However, if the current system isn’t working well for them, you could suggest a daily check-in (maybe every afternoon, whenever you can grab them for two minutes) where you run down all the meeting requests that have come in since you last talked. You can also ask whether there are categories of meetings you can schedule without confirming with them first (like maybe those execs whose requests always take priority and/or important clients).

4. What the highest number of people a manager can effectively manage?

I currently work at a baby-mega corp (8,000 employees), and previously worked at an F100 with over 200,000 employees. In both places, I have come across the idea (promoted by outside consultants in both cases) that the “ideal” maximum number of direct reports for a manager was between 4-7 people.

Is there any research behind this, or does this depend more on the nature of the role? I’m a “working manager” myself — I manage three people, mentor three less senior employees (who don’t report to me), and am expected to maintain a full substantive workload on top of managing. In contrast, I assume (and would hope!) that the person with a lot of directs is expected to be more focused on managing others’ work — but even so, I’d be curious to hear your perspective on how numbers impact effectiveness.

It does vary based on the type of jobs you’re managing, but for most professional jobs in general it’s rough to directly manage more than six or so people, at least if you want to do it effectively (meaning that you’re reviewing and evaluating work, giving feedback, setting and monitoring progress on big picture goals, spotting and addressing problems, giving people meaningful opportunities for input, helping them develop their skills, dealing with performance issues, keeping an eye on culture and morale, and through all of that being accessible and having the normal ad hoc conversations that are part of working with/managing people).

In some cases where the people being managed are doing either very rote work or very independent work, it could be a higher number, but generally once you go past that point you need to build in some layers of management in between.

And yes, if you’re expected to produce a significant body of your own work on top of managing a team, that affects the calculation as well.

5. I’m not getting my accrued vacation time when I switch agencies

I work for a city agency. Let’s call them Agency A. I’ve been with A for a year and six months. I found a new position with Agency B. I gave notice on 4/4 and my last day was supposed to be 4/18.

But on 4/16, I got an email stating that I’m still a provisional employee, not a permanent one. As such, I cannot transfer to Agency B and must resign. As a resigning employee, I also can’t bring any of my accrued time with me to B. Also, Agency A does not pay out any accrued time for resigning or retiring employees. My manager told me that he’s seen people with 30 + years at the agency lose their accrued time upon retirement.

I said if that’s the case, then there’s no reason for me to finish out my notice period. I’m leaving and 4/16 will be my last day. I was told that only the director of the agency has the authority to grant my “request.” He was in a meeting and didn’t get back to me until after 6 pm. He said my request is denied because no one can request vacation the night before. You need to give advance notice and have your manager’s approval. Request denied. Report to work.

I’ve calmed down a little, but internally I’m still seething! I called my union but no one has gotten back to me yet. Is there anything I can do? What are your thoughts?

I’m answering too late for you to implement this advice, but in case it’s still useful for you or others:

There’s not really anything you can do; these are their policies and they are legal ones (as long as your state doesn’t require vacation payout upon departure, which I’m guessing it doesn’t — and even if it does, public employees are sometimes exempted). The only part that’s really in your control is whether you work out your notice period or not. Did your director think you were asking to use vacation time for the rest of your notice period? Because that’s the only thing in their power to approve or deny; they can’t stop you from simply leaving.

You do have the option of saying “sorry, but 4/16 was my last day” … but the downside of that is that not finishing a notice period can mean you’re ineligible for rehire and can affect the kind of references you get. Since we’re only talking about a two-day difference, that’s less likely to happen, but it’s still something you’d want to factor in.