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

1. My manager and coworker are fighting and I’m stuck in the middle

My manager, Rose, is not good at her job. She routinely forgets things, does a terrible job advocating for the department, plays favorites, and isn’t proactive at solving problems. My coworker, Donna, is also not good at her job, but in a personal sense. She’s horrifically burnt out but isn’t taking steps to address it, holds grudges over slights that happened 5+ years ago, and goes from 0 to 100 in her moods. Adding fuel to the fire, Rose is conflict-averse, Donna is conflict-prone. As I’m the newest person in the office without the 10 years of beef these two have, both Rose and Donna have complained about the other to me before.

There have been multiple occasions where Rose and Donna got into a verbal fight. Recently, Rose gave Donna a poor performance review and all hell has broken loose. I only know about this secondhand, from Donna, so I have no idea what the review actually said — Donna feels that Rose is out to get her, though in my opinion parts of the poor review were probably justified. Donna’s been complaining about Rose at every opportunity, while Rose is actively avoiding Donna.

I’m sick and tired of this. Ideally, I’d like to tell both of them to stop bitching, nut up, and just do their damn jobs, but I can’t do that to Rose as she’s my manager and if I do that to Donna, she’ll view it as a personal slight. Donna and I work closely together and I won’t be able to do my job if she’s fighting with me the same way she’s fighting with Rose. How do I navigate this minefield of personal drama that I don’t want to be a part of?

To Donna when she complains about Rose: “I’m sorry you’re having a tough time. Please know I care but it’s affecting my focus so much that I just can’t be your sounding board for it anymore — I’m sorry.” If she views that as a personal slight … well, it sounds like she views a lot of things as a personal slight and that’s probably going to happen between the two of you at some point anyway (if not with this, then with something else). When someone is that volatile, you can never tiptoe around them so perfectly that you never set them off, so do yourself the favor of setting a reasonable boundary. If her reaction prevents you from doing your job, you’d need to take that to Rose — who, yes, sucks at solving problems, but it would still be hers to deal with. If she doesn’t and Donna is truly obstructing you from doing your job, you could escalate it. But if Donna is just visibly upset with you, let that be okay, as long as she’s not openly hostile.

If Rose complains about Donna: “I should stay out of this, since I have to work closely with her.”

Ultimately, Rose is the bigger problem because she should be managing this entire situation and isn’t — but the day-to-day quality of life stuff is coming from Donna and you have more control over that piece, so focus there.

Related:
my coworker complains all day long

2. I thought I was taking a leadership job — it turned out to be entry-level

I recently left a leadership position at a statewide nonprofit to join the national staff of a much larger nonprofit. I interviewed for this position believing it would be part of one of the major departments’ leadership teams. Titles are pretty standardized across our field, and the title and job description gave the impression that this would be a major internal consultant position, working with multiple chapters nationwide to help them develop metrics, assist with long- and short-term planning, and provide overall guidance. The pay was also commensurate with a leadership position and was far, far more than I was making in my then-position.

During the interview process, which was quite long, I was never interviewed by the same people twice, and in many instances, I was interviewed by people who were quite unfamiliar with the position. When I would inquire about job specifics, I was given the impression that the vagueness was due to the fluidity of the position; the main priority is what the chapters need, and it’s different for each state. I need to emphasize that throughout the process, they mentioned assisting “chapters,” always plural. I talked about broad national programs for the organization and how “strategies I used in X state might work in states Y and Z,” and no one corrected me.

When I started, however, it became clear that I was actually one of multiple “consultants” being hired, and I would be assigned to a single state. It also became clear that much of the “consulting” was grunt work, and that overall this position was an entry-level job for individual chapters embedded in the national organization. All doubts were cleared up when I was given access to some planning documents created last year, in which the original title of the position reflected its entry-level nature. I’m pretty sure they changed the title to attract more qualified candidates.

On the one hand, I am humiliated. I thought I was getting a huge promotion into an exciting and challenging new role on the national level that would launch my career to new heights and provide me with invaluable experience! On the other hand, the money and benefits are fantastic; I have almost doubled my past salary. And while the work is entry-level, the title on my resume would not give that impression. I also am not burdened by managerial responsibilities. When I talked to my wife about this, she was totally surprised that I was upset, because “you are getting paid way more to do far less,” and she does have a point.

What should I do, and how should I be feeling about all this? I feel like I’ve been lied to, and I am not getting the job I thought I was. On the other hand, this is a job I can do with my eyes closed, so should I just ride this out for a while?

Here’s what I’d think about and what I think your wife’s response overlooks: are you bored or likely to become bored in the near- to medium-term future? Are your skills going to stagnate? When you decide you do want to leave this job, will you have accomplishments for your resume that will help you get the job you’ll want after this one? Are you happy to have this break in responsibility or frustrated by the limitations of the role? What’s going on in the organization that caused them to so misrepresent the nature of the job, and is that symptomatic of other frustrations that will be heading your way?

I can’t answer those for you, but those are the questions I’d reflect on in your shoes. And regardless of your answers to them, it’s possible that given the state of the job market and the world right now, you might decide you’re happy to hunker down here for a while and make this work. Or you might decide that while it’s not so bad for right now, the longer you stay, the harder it will be to move on to the sort of job you do want once you’re looking again. There’s no easy answer — but “be happy you’re being paid more to do less” is an oversimplification.

Related:
should I stay in my well-paid job even though I have nothing to do?

3. How should I have handled a recommendation I didn’t want?

Something that happened to me some time ago that I didn’t know how to handle. I’d gone in for an interview for an internship that perfectly aligned with what I wanted to do with my degree. During the interview stage, I ran into a classmate, their current intern. About a week later, she told me she had recommended me for the internship and that she loved my work and how good of a job I’d do at this company.

This would have been great, if I didn’t know that the quality of her work was bad, and that she’d gotten drunk at that company’s Christmas party! (I knew that her work quality was bad due to having a TA-esque role in a class she took, where she did extraordinarily badly.)

I don’t know if that’s the reason I never heard back, but should I have followed up with the manager after finding out she’d recommended me saying that I’m not affiliated with her? Should I have handled the interaction during the interview differently?

Nope, there was nothing you needed to do. First, doing badly in one class doesn’t mean that someone will do badly in an internship. (If what you observed was something like that she had no grasp of foundational concepts, then it’s more likely — but even then, she could have gotten better later. And for all we know, she had other stuff going on that semester that got in her way, but that doesn’t mean she could never do well.)

But even if you knew for sure that her work quality was still bad, there wasn’t anything you needed to do here. Low performers don’t really impact someone else’s chances by recommending them; the employer might not give any weight to her opinion, but they’d be unlikely to hold it against you if you’d made your own good impression. (And really, there’s a good chance they wouldn’t have given much weight to a good intern’s opinion either.)

4. Can you ask to have a vacation day become a sick day if you get sick on your trip?

My family is having a disagreement about work norms, and I’m wondering if I was an overly permissive manager or if my sister-in-law works in a strict environment. (Or somewhere in between. It’s usually somewhere in between!)

My sister-in-law came to visit for a week, and got a really nasty cold the day after she arrived. I’m not talking just feeling icky, she had a fever of 102F, didn’t eat for two days because food didn’t stay down, and basically couldn’t leave her room from sheer exhaustion.

I asked if she was going to reclassify her vacation (or even just the worst couple days) as sick time, because if she had been at home she absolutely would have not been going in. Both she and my spouse looked at me like I was crazy, and I said it didn’t happen often, but I was happy to make the change for my reports if people got really unlucky. Sometimes it happens!

But their response (and she asked a coworker too) make me reconsider how obvious I find the situation. So what’s normal?

It’s a completely acceptable thing to ask about! Some companies will do it and some companies won’t, but there’s nothing outrageous about inquiring to find out. Among companies that do, the idea is that you need real downtime to fully recharge, with all the benefits that brings your employer, and if you’re sick you’re not really recharging.

5. Does my boss not think I can do work I did in a previous job?

I work for government with a boss who is typically very relaxed and flexible with the entire team. I previously worked in higher education doing very difficult stakeholder meeting facilitation for multiple groups every week. My boss knows this and has acknowledged that I have previous years of experience before he hired me.

We were all at a meeting to discuss if we wanted to hire a contractor to do stakeholder meeting facilitation or if we could do it ourselves (it’s way more difficult than just reading off a PowerPoint!). I said that I had done this in a previous job but that it was very hard. This startled everyone on the team (physical reactions) but most people quickly agreed. Then my boss said he’s sure some of us could handle it, while gesturing to my male coworker and looking at him, not me, then said he thinks the stakeholders would want a contractor.

Should I have kept my mouth shut and not said that I did this before? The gesturing at my coworker and looking at him instead of me after what I immediately just said seems like my boss doesn’t believe I could handle it, right?

It sounds more likely that your boss took what you said to indicate that you weren’t enthusiastic about doing it (unless you were explicit that that’s not what you meant). If you want to clear it up, you could follow up with your boss now to clarify (“If we do decide to facilitate the meetings ourselves, it’s something I have experience in and would be interested in doing”), which might be worth doing even if he’s leaning toward a contractor anyway.

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

1. I confessed my crush to my manager

I’m asking for advice about my manager. He’s a tier above me, and it’s frowned upon to hangout with different tiers outside of work hours, though it still happens. My manager told me he takes the rules very seriously, although I recently learned that isn’t true because he does hangout with lower tiers outside of work, and has flirted with women in his department, which feels hypocritical.

He was transferred over to my department a couple of months back, and while he was going through the training process leading up to it, I confessed my feelings for him. I explained that I want to honor a professional relationship, but that I owed it to myself to tell him that it was more than just a crush for me. He accepted the compliment and said we can’t date because we work together, I said that I would have been willing to change shifts or departments, and he gave a memorized summary of the rules and said we would’ve had to get the whole thing approved by HR, etc. Even though it was a soft rejection, it didn’t feel like an outright lack of interest.

My confusion is this: one of his closest work friends said that he was known at his last facility for following women he liked around like a puppy, and that he brought that same energy to this site by pursuing another woman who was flirty and also married. I also found out from someone else that he is now in a relationship, since before I gave my confession. I don’t understand why he didn’t use my moment of confiding as a way to be open as well about seeing someone, instead of giving a recitation of the rule book.

He also became way more friendly and quirky/playful with me after my confession — more familiar with how he chatted, seeking out more eye contact, more jokes, more lingering. I took that as a reason to hope, but now I feel like I was just an ego boost for him and that I was vulnerable and honest for nothing. Now I don’t think I can trust anything he says as a friend or manager.

Noooo, this is all a problem. You have a manager who’s known for following women around “like a puppy” (which is creepy and could easily be harassment at work), is pursuing a married colleague (while in a position of authority, no less), and is now being friendlier than before to an employee who confessed to having a crush on him. All of that is gross and at odds with being an effective manager (and a decent coworker, for that matter).

Your end of this pales in comparison to his, but you don’t “owe it to yourself” to confess an attraction to a coworker, particularly one in your chain of command. Where attraction is involved, you owe it to your coworkers to prioritize their comfort at work over your romantic interest in them. (That doesn’t mean coworkers can never date. It means that you need to see real signals of reciprocated interest first, and still not make dramatic confessions that will put someone on the spot, and it does mean that people in your chain of command — in either direction — are off-limits.)

But you’re right that you can’t trust your manager as a friend or as a manager. You can’t trust him as a friend because he’s not your friend; he’s your boss (more on that here). And you can’t trust him as a manager because he’s shown himself to have terrible judgment.

Truly, this man is bad news on all fronts. You want professional distance, nothing more.

2. Carpenter treating colleague poorly

My workplace was having some new cupboards installed, so we were encouraged to work from home unless we needed to be on site. The day after, the two colleagues who had been in shared that the main carpenter had been very unpleasant to his much younger coworker, calling him stupid, making unkind comments, and being rude to him.

I keep thinking about what I would do in that situation and I can’t decide. What would you advise? Report him to his company? Ask him to keep his tone respectful when in our office? Tell the young coworker he is being treated poorly and it isn’t right? Do nothing?

We are renting our offices within a building owned by a larger organization that occupies the rest of the space, so the contractors were bought in by our landlord (after much back and forth about who was responsible), so we don’t have a direct relationship with the carpentry company.

You have every right to say to someone who’s bringing that sort of hostility and disrespect into your workplace, “Could you please talk to your colleague more respectfully? It’s very disruptive to hear this.” Or even just, “Whoa, that’s not okay here.” You’d also have standing to call his company and share what happened (even without a direct relationship with them.)

3. Leaving when you’re a director and your departure will result in disaster

I’m writing with a follow-up question to your March 31 post, “How do I train my team to do my job without making it obvious I’m planning to leave?”

In your response, you say, “The more senior your job gets, the more it’s your responsibility to ensure things like that are taken care of. If you’re a department director saying “no one will be able to cover even the basics if I’m buried in an avalanche tomorrow, oh well, too bad,” that’s a problem. That kind of planning is part of that job.”

What do you do when you’re a department director, and no one will be able to cover even the basics because you’re so overworked and understaffed? I’m the director of a very small department that has outsized impact on both internal and external partners. My supervisor and my grandboss (the head of our organization) acknowledge that my job description is at least two full-time positions and that I’m doing even more work than that. I’ve told them that the situation is unsustainable and that without additional staffing and support, I will leave. My manager knows I’m looking, and knows that the staffing situation is why. As part of these conversations with him, I’ve documented what will happen if any of my responsibilities aren’t done, and made suggestions about how to ameliorate those consequences, so he’s very aware of the impact that my departure would have.

I’ve read your site long enough and been burned here enough to realize finally that this situation will never change. There’s also literally nobody who can do the majority of my job. When I do leave, what is the best way for me to approach succession planning? I have full documentation of everything that I do, but nobody in my department would even be considered by higher-ups and HR for coverage of my responsibilities, due to how their positions are categorized. I haven’t left yet because I feel so guilty about leaving my staff and the communities we serve, but my burnout and anger are finally strong enough to outweigh the guilt.

You can’t do succession planning in the situation you’ve described. You’ve done the other part of my advice from that post, which is to make the situation very clear to someone above you. They are aware. You aren’t simply seeing the situation and neglecting it. You’ve escalated your concerns and been clear to the organization’s leadership about the risks they’re taking and the fact that you don’t have the ability to resolve that on your own. They know. They are choosing not to deal with it.

You can leave with a clear conscience and no guilt.

4. Company isn’t paying my employee for a lunch break she’s not taking

I just started a new role, and I wanted to check on something that’s happening for one of my direct reports. I think this is a “legal, but your boss sucks” kind of situation. My hourly direct report travels for work. She charges her time from when she leaves her hotel room in the morning until when she returns at night. The days can sometimes be very long.

When she gets paid overtime, the finance team doesn’t pay her until she hits 45 hours, because technically she “had a lunch break” even though she worked through that lunch most of the days. Also … she’s on a work trip. She woke up early to get on a plane. She’s not at home. She has much less control of her day because she’s on someone else’s schedule. They’re really going to take out these five hours?

Do I advise her to take the lunch break, or how do I best advocate with our finance team to just pay her for the full-time worked?

Actually, it’s not legal! If she’s working through lunch, they’re required by law to pay her for that time (or they need to explicitly tell her that she is required to take a real lunch break where she is not working and then enforce that).

However, if they’re currently paying her from her travel time from her hotel to her worksite and then back later, that’s more than they’re required to do by law (typically that would be considered akin to a commute if it falls outside her work hours), so on a practical level it might be a wash.

If you want to address it, the framing you want is: “I’m concerned that we’re out of sync with federal law on this, since if she’s working rather than taking a lunch break, we can’t legally dock her for a break.” You could add, “I also don’t want her to feel we’re nickel and diming her, given what long days she’s working and how disruptive this much travel can be to someone’s life.”

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

1. Should you fire someone you wouldn’t hire now?

I recently attended an event where a speaker said that if a manager is evaluating to let go a lower-performing employee, they should ask themselves, “Would I hire them now?” And if the answer is no, then let them go.

I don’t believe in black and white decisions. The presenter probably didn’t think of it that way but it feels that way. What is your take on this?

If you’re trying to decide how to proceed with a low-performing employee, “Would I hire them today, knowing everything I know now?” is a useful question to ask yourself. I don’t agree that “no” should always point immediately to firing them, but it’s a useful question to reflect on. Very often, managers hold on to low performers long past the point that they should, and that type of question can be a way to bring clarity to the situation.

The question I prefer (and it’s discussed more extensively in the book on management I co-authored) is, “If you had a button which, if pushed, would lead to your staff member being replaced instantaneously, without any difficult conversations or the hassles of interviewing and training someone new, would you push it?” Very often, the main thing holding managers back from acting when they need to is not wanting to deal with what they imagine it will entail. Also useful is, “If the person walked into your office and told you she was leaving to take another job, would you feel concern or relief?”

But none of these mean “then you absolutely should fire the person.” They’re all just ways to get clarity on your thinking.

2. My coworker wanted to step back and then changed his mind, but I’m taking his job

I work as a middle manager. My department is fairly large, but most people only report to me for a small percentage of their time (i.e., they work in my department four hours out of their week, and the rest in their primary job).

Last year, my supervisor let me know that my colleague (Alf), who is at the same level but over a different team, was experiencing burnout and wanted to step back. Alf’s team works in an area related to the one I currently supervise, but is actually more aligned with my background and professional interests. There are also three full-time reports in his unit (or four with Alf returning to the team as a regular employee). I have been interested in getting more involved in managing the work of that unit, and my supervisor and I came up with a proposal to combine the two units under me (and dropping some other parts of my job that are not my favorite to ensure I had a reasonable workload). I love managing people and have been told many times that I am good at it and that the organization would be excited for me to be in this new role. I thought things were pretty set to transition this summer.

But now Alf has said that he wants to stay in his current manager role after all. However, our director (my boss’s boss) wants me to take this new role on anyway and for Alf to step down. Alf is a decent manager, but he’s not a big picture thinker, which we need due to massive changes coming in our field. My director feels I am the right person for the job at this moment. Still, I feel extremely awkward about this. I agreed because I was under the impression Alf wanted to step down. I don’t want him to feel like I am stealing his job against his will. To complicate things further, Alf was my supervisor for about seven years before I got my current job.

This is the kind of organization where people stay for their whole careers, so I will likely need to work with Alf for some time. It’s also possible he may continue doing work in one of the two units I oversee. Any advice for how I should approach him? Acknowledge that this is awkward AF? Reassure him I wasn’t trying to steal his job? Let him feel his very understandable feelings for a while before approaching? We are friendly, but don’t talk regularly now that I don’t report to him.

The primary messaging on this really needs to come from your director, who should be transparent with Alf about why this change is happening and what it means for his career there.

Once that’s done, your approach with Alf should be a positive one — you’re excited to work with him, he should let you know what he needs, etc. I would not say anything about it being awkward or reassure him that you weren’t trying to take his job; there’s too much risk that will make things more awkward for him than if you just keep things positive, matter-of-fact, and forward-looking. Give him some time to adjust to the change and operate as if of course he will adjust; if that doesn’t happen, you’ll have to address it at that point, but it’s a kindness to him to move forward without anticipating/assuming weirdness if you can.

3. HR thinks I completed an engagement survey but I didn’t

My organization recently used an outside company to conduct an employee engagement survey. I was on the fence about completing the survey because of how it was handled last year. I opened my unique survey link to click around and read the questions, but never submitted it.

At various points during the survey period, HR sent emails about survey completion by department. I noticed in one of these updates that my department had a 100% completion rate. I’m the head of the department, so I thought perhaps my own survey was not meant to count here and maybe rolled up into leadership instead, but none of the other categories made sense for where my survey would be counted. I assumed my survey results were slated to be yeeted into the abyss and decided not to submit it.

Today, I had a meeting with HR to review the results of the survey. They started the meeting by saying that my team had five people, including me, invited to take the survey and that all five, including me, did so. I didn’t confess that I didn’t because I didn’t want to derail the whole meeting or be slapped on the wrist for not participating, but I couldn’t help thinking that the results cannot possibly be accurate.

Should I have told them? I’m questioning if there are other issues with the survey or its analysis based on my knowledge that what I’m being presented is incorrect. What could have possibly happened?! Is it worth being chided by HR for my delinquency in order to shine a light on problems with the survey process?

Separately, what’s your take on employee engagement surveys? Are they valuable? Do organizations/companies make meaningful changes based on feedback provided in this manner?

As a department head, yeah, I think you should have flagged it. You’re part of the organization’s leadership and if you’re aware of major inaccuracies with the survey, you should say something. It doesn’t need to be a big deal — just, “Are you sure that’s right? I actually didn’t complete mine — happy to talk about why if you want — so I’m concerned that might indicate our numbers are off in other ways.”

And then if they wanted to know why you didn’t complete it, you could have explained the emails saying 100% of your department already had made you assume yours wasn’t being counted and thus wasn’t needed. Or you could have talked about whatever the issues were that made you on the fence about doing it in the first place, if that’s something you were willing to get into.

As for the value of these surveys, they vary widely by company. If your company is a place that welcome dissent and takes feedback seriously, they can be worthwhile. If they’re not, then they usually just breed cynicism and can in some cases make disengagement worse if feedback is solicited but always ignored.

4. My contact’s mentee thinks we’re hiring, but we’re not

A former coworker reached out asking if I’d do an informational interview with someone he’s mentoring who is applying for an open entry-level position in my division to talk about my work and the company. I am, of course, happy to meet with them.

Except I asked around about this position, including to the head of our division, who said she didn’t know what this job posting is because we are not hiring. I’m not sure how it got posted or if it got posted for the wrong division, but we are not hiring for any positions at this time due to budget issues.

I will still meet with this person, and they should probably still apply just to be in our system and perhaps they’d be considered for a real opening in another division. How transparent should I be that my understanding is that we are not actually hiring for this role? The job market is hard enough so I don’t want to give false hope or waste anyone’s time, but I’m also not really authorized to speak on hiring in this way.

There’s nothing wrong with saying, “As far as I know, we’re not currently hiring for this position. Where did you see the posting?” And if you wanted to, you could check with your manager to ask if it’s okay to officially relay that your division isn’t currently hiring; they may be fine with that.

5. What questions should I ask in an interview with a recruiter?

I’m searching for a new job and, after several years out of the interview process, I’ve noticed that many of my first-round interviews are now brief phone screens with HR recruiters rather than conversations with the hiring manager. I know it’s important to ask thoughtful questions at the end of an interview, but recruiters often don’t have deep insight into the day-to-day responsibilities or team dynamics of the role. What kinds of questions are most appropriate and effective to ask in that setting? Is it still important to have questions for recruiters?

Yes, you should still have questions — and most likely, you do have things you’d like them to answer if you think about it!

It’s true that anything nuanced about the job or the team is better saved for the hiring manager, but recruiters will be equipped to answer things about what qualifications and experience are most important for the role, the size and structure of the team, and why the position is open, as well as anything logistical, like the salary, remote vs. hybrid vs. in-office, the likely timeline for making a hire, and what they expect the process to look like.