Ask a Manager

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

1. Is it normal to complain about coworkers behind their backs?

I wanted to ask about office norms when it comes to expressing irritation about colleagues. I’m currently working at my first job, and will be leaving in a couple of months due to studying. One of the things that really bothers me about this office is the amount of complaining about people behind their backs that goes on – I understand venting, but a lot of this has a really catty, high school vibe to me.

The room I work in is shared by around a dozen people, depending on the day, and often when someone leaves the room people will start criticizing them, regardless of how senior they are. The worst I’ve heard so far was someone leaving the room and someone else immediately saying “bitch.” Other comments can be things like complaining about someone’s negativity or the way they handle their boss’s requests or, it seems, everything under the sun.

I don’t participate in this, and since I’m leaving soon I’m willing to just put up with the unpleasant atmosphere it creates, but since this is my first job I’d really like to know if this is a normal thing in the workplace. Is it normal to criticize colleagues in their own office? A lot of this stuff I’d consider unpleasant but more acceptable if people did it somewhere else, over their lunch break, or if they were discussing a way to address a problem, but saying these kind of things in someone’s own office just seems kind of mean. I feel like I can’t be the only one worrying that they’re being talked about every time they go to the bathroom.

No, it’s not normal. There are certainly places where it happens, but it’s the sign of a really dysfunctional workplace. It’s a little more common to see private negativity, like one person privately complaining to a coworker about another, but it’s usually deliberately kept discreet, and that’s usually because people recognize that it isn’t okay be open about it. The type of group nastiness that you describe, where people are insulted after leaving a room? Very much not normal, and it sounds like a miserable atmosphere to work in. (And not just miserable in the “these people are jerks” sense — although that too — but constant complaining tends to make the complainers themselves significantly less happy too. )

2. Manager is in a romantic relationship with a junior staff member

My department director just promoted a man who is openly having a romantic relationship with a junior staff member. The junior staff member now comes in late, leaves early, takes long lunches in her boyfriend’s ( our department manager’s) office with the door closed and the blinds drawn, and isn’t required to enter in the staff lottery for vacation time – she’s just granted it. My department director was aware of the relationship when he made the promotion and says we all just “have to be adults” about the whole thing. Based on comments made by the junior staff member, her boyfriend has shared confidential staff files with her – everything from disciplinary documentation to medical notes and salary information. Based on her job functions, there is absolutely no reason why she should have this information, and her sharing of this confidential information has caused several people to quit.

We are a state-run facility and are due for state inspection by the end of the month. My coworkers are all recent college graduates and new in the field and they don’t want to make waves, but after ten years in this field, I know the state and the administration would be appalled. Part of our inspection includes individual performance interviews with the administration, and I plan on telling them about this issue during the interview. This little side drama has caused a drop in staff morale and has prevented us from giving our clients the attention they need. I’ve worked under my director for five years and he is generally a good boss. I want to inform him as a courtesy that I’ll be talking to the state about the manager’s relationship and the breach of confidentiality, but others feel if I warn him he’ll try and cover up the relationship and downplay my concerns to the administration. Is it unprofessional to not make my boss aware of my plans?

Nope, it’s not unprofessional, and in fact I’d recommend that you not mention it to your boss ahead of time if you believe that he’ll actively try to cover up the situation. It’s outrageous that your director knows what’s going on and says you “have to be adults about it,” when being adults about would mean recognizing that what’s happening isn’t okay and needs to be stopped. There’s a reason that dating in your chain of command is prohibited in most companies, even when the people involved handle themselves professionally; in this case, they’re not even doing that.

When you report it to the inspector — and you should — make sure to mention that your director knows and what she said about it.

Read an update to this letter here.

3. Can I ask an acquaintance about what pay range to expect in her job?

I have an upcoming interview for a position as a representative within an organization. Unsurprisingly, the pay was not listed on the job description and I was asked on the employment application for my desired salary, as well as past salaries.

In my research to ensure I am prepared for the interview and (hopefully) pay negotiation, would it be inappropriate or ill-advised to ask an acquaintance, who is currently a representative for the same organization, for an idea of what pay range to expect? If an acceptable question, how can I ask it in a tactful and tasteful way? I would not be replacing the acquaintance; there are several representatives in the organization.

Yes, that’s fine to do, and the way you’ve framed it here is good — ask for an idea of what pay range to expect rather than saying outright, “What do you make?” I’d say it like this: “I want to make sure I’m prepared for any salary discussion that comes up. If you’re comfortable with it, can you give me an idea of what pay range to expect in this position?”

4. I opened a love letter (or something) sent to a volunteer

I received a piece of mail at work addressed “care of Miller.” I have several volunteers with the last name Miller, so I opened it to see who it was sent to. It turned out to be a birthday card that said, “I love you. Please let me back into your life.” Clearly this person does not know where volunteer Miller lives. I am unsure whether to give her the card or not!

I think you need to. If this is someone who your volunteer has told to stop contacting her, she needs to know that that’s being ignored. Worst case scenario, if the person is stalking or otherwise threatening her, she needs to know that they’ve escalated to contacting her at work. And if none of those things are true and it’s a low-risk situation, by not giving it to her you’d be making a decision for her about whether it’s something she’d want to see, which you don’t really have standing to do. So yes, pass it along to her.

5. I’m an independent contractor being treated like an employee

I have a part-time job that I’ve been at for eight months. I have another full-time job and am a full-time student. I was first hired as an independent contractor and didn’t work in the office, only did off-site projects. There was one other employee with the same job description and independent contractor status. Since then, I’ve gotten two raises (which is great), and have been asked to start doing office work. Now, I spend most of my time working in their office, doing basic filing and office work. No one else is doing these projects.

Since school is out, they’ve been pushing for more and more hours from me. My full time job is remote, so I can set my own hours, so I’ve been okay with putting in more time in the office. However, when I run out of my set office work to do, instead of leaving, they want me to train with one of their full-time employees, who is not an independent contractor.

She gets her miles and expenses reimbursed and I do not, as well as receiving the tax benefits. I feel very weird about this. I realize that what I’m doing isn’t really independent contractor work, but I needed the income so I didn’t push back. Is it appropriate now to ask to be transferred into full employee status if I’m doing the exact same things as employees? Also, I don’t really want to spend time training with another employee. I already have a full-time job, and if they’re not going to make me a real employee, I don’t want to have to do the work of one.

I can’t say for sure without knowing more, but based on what you’ve said here and if you’re doing the same things as that employee, it’s very likely that you no longer qualify to be treated as an independent contractor.

It is indeed appropriate to ask to be paid as a full-time employee or to have your work return to the previous set-up. (Keep in mind, though, that converting to employee status may actually mean less pay; independent contractors are typically paid more since they’re responsible for their own payroll taxes and don’t receive benefits.)

I’d say it this way: “Our current set-up with having me do this much work in the office is starting to run afoul of the federal regulations on independent contractors. To stay compliant with the law, I think we have to either move back toward our old model for my work or convert me to employee status, which I’d be glad to discuss doing if that’s something that would make sense on your end.”

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

1. Is something sketchy about this interview invitation?

I recently received an invitation to interview with an direct marking company (based outside of the U.S.) who just opened their first U.S. location. They are hiring for all sorts of positions, but I only applied for one that suited my interests and career goals the most.

There’s a portion in their interview invitation email went something like this: “I’m sure you’ve applied for a lot of roles and want some information on what you actually applied for.”

I don’t have a good feeling about this; it seems like they did not even acknowledge what I applied for and could possibly try to sell me on a position that I am not interested in. Furthermore, they go on to note that they have included links to more information about their company, but the links are to articles about “Signs You Were Born to be an Entrepreneur” or “Ten Habits of Highly Successful People,” both articles that they have published themselves on their own website. At most, those articles give me an idea of their company culture.

Should I even bother with an interview? Or should I at least email them back and ask for them to clarify what position I’ll be interviewing for? If I decide to interview, I don’t want to go into it blind.

Are you sure that it’s a legit job and not a multi-level marketing scheme? The articles they linked you to are screaming MLM to me.

Plus, telling you “you probably want some information on what you actually applied for” and then pointedly not giving you that information screams MLM too.

In any case, though, it’s absolutely reasonable to email them back and ask for clarification about the position. Their response (or non-response) to that should tell you all you need to know. Reputable companies don’t ask to interview people and then refuse to tell them what it’s for.

2. Can I unfriend my boss on Facebook?

I am a few years out of school, working in one of my first real jobs. I currently work in a large organization with lots of young people. There’s a friendly environment and people socialize outside of work. I am happy to get a drink with my direct colleagues once in a while, so that’s not an issue for me.

The thing is that right from the start, people have been Facebook-adding each other. I was nervous starting this job, didn’t want to seem unfriendly, and accepted most of them, including one from my manager. In fact, our entire team are Facebook friends. I feel uncomfortable now and post less (sometimes changing privacy settings to leave them off). I don’t mind about my colleagues, but my manager and I have clashed in the past, and they have proven they bring unrelated complaints and events into work feedback (like extrapolating a casual comment at lunch into a concern about an aspect of my work).

I would really like to just unfriend them, but feel like making a distinction between them and my coworkers might seem antagonizing. Any advice?

Is your manager a heavy Facebook user who’s likely to notice or care about an unfriending? If so, you risk it seeming like an adversarial act (which is ridiculous; it shouldn’t seem that way but in reality it could). If that’s the case, the easier route would be to just set your privacy settings so that they don’t see anything you post.

But you’d certainly be entitled to unfriend her entirely if you prefer. Most people aren’t rude enough to demand to know why you unfriended them, but if that happens, you can just say, “I realized I was letting the boundaries between work and personal life blur too much so I’ve tried to pull back.”

3. My coworker won’t stop drumming on his desk

A few months ago, someone moved into the cubicle next to me. He listens to music without his headphones (uncommon in our office) and drums on his desk what feels like all day but is probably more like 50% of the time. Not just little nervous taps but full-on beats, drum rolls, etc.

The music I think I could get used to if I really had to, but the drumming is driving me up the wall. I have a really hard time focusing with background noise generally, and my own music (in my headphones) doesn’t cover up the intermittent drumming.

I want to approach him about it and ask politely if he’d stop or cut back on drumming, but I’m not sure if (a) I missed my window since he’s been there for months while I try to work up the courage and (b) how exactly to phrase my request in the most polite and effective way.

My actual ideal scenario is that he use his headphones and stop drumming, but I’m not sure if that’s too much to ask, and I could settle for just the drumming going away. Can I ask him to stop? If so… how?

You haven’t missed the window, and I think you can ask him for both. Say this: “Hey Bob, I’ve been trying to block it out, but your music and drumming your fingers is making it pretty hard for me to focus. Would you mind using headphones like most people do here when they want to listen to music and not drumming on your desk so much?”

This is an entirely reasonable request and if he’s a normal person he’ll take it in stride. He might be annoyed about having to use headphones, but if you point out that that’s the norm in your office, he’s not going to have much ground to stand on in refusing.

4. Should I take my resume out of chronological order?

I’m finishing up a graduate program and currently searching for jobs. As part of our program, we had some professional development courses that provided examples and guidelines for cover letters and resumes, and on top of that, before I went back to school, I had some limited experience reviewing applications to select interns for my old company. I know what I like to see in a resume and what bothered me, and I have always had a resume that has separate education and job experience sections, in chronological order. I’ve had quite a few internships, and to keep my experience on one page, I’ve omitted the jobs that aren’t relevant to the positions I apply to and given the more pertinent/impressive opportunities more bullet point details.

A friend’s company is actively looking for referrals and so he has agreed to pass on my resume to the hiring managers. During undergrad, I had one really great sounding internship at a high profile organization that ostensibly would foster the kind of knowledge this company wants, followed by a job at a well known NGO, followed by a few small business/not so relevant internships during the past two years at school. His advice was to put the two more prestigious job descriptions at the top, regardless of timeline. Is this good advice? The high profile organization was seven years ago, and despite how great it sounds on paper, I don’t feel like I really gained a lot of hands-on professional experience during my summer there. Is my personal distaste for functional resumes clouding my judgement and burying an attention-grabbing position that should be placed more prominently?

He’s not suggesting you do a functional resume, which I’d agree you should stay far away from. (More on that here.)

He’s just suggesting you move your most relevant experience to the top so that it’s not buried. That makes sense in some situations. Of course, you wouldn’t want to have your work experience section jumping all around in no chronological order. Instead, what you’d do is to put a Relevant Experience section at the top, put the most impressive/relevant jobs in it, and then have an Other Experience section for everything else.

That said … does it makes sense in your particular situation? It’s hard to say for sure without seeing your resume, but if he’s suggesting it only because the organization is impressive but you don’t feel like your work there was particularly substantive — and especially if it was just one summer seven years ago — I think that would be giving it weird emphasis that isn’t warranted.

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

1. My mom wants me to help with her business for free

Before I moved out, I often got into arguments with my parents over money. I didn’t mind taking out the trash, doing the laundry, cooking, etc. I had no issue with these tasks. However, my parents would often ask me to do things for free that a professional would normally do. These tasks took huge chunks out of time out of searching for a job, and were not compensated. I was told I was being “greedy” when I brought up payment for things like selling things on eBay or painting a mural for them. When I moved out, I was then busy enough that I could claim time to not do these time consuming, often expensive tasks.

However, I’m recently on break due to summer, and my mother now wants me to help with a business where I will be designing things to be sold. She wants me to do the research on the patents, file them in her name, make the prototypes, etc. but has never once talked about payment for all of these things. I know things are slow, but I really don’t have the time to devote to this, especially if I won’t be compensated whether or not this ever gets off the ground. She seems to think this will take off by the end of summer, but I know these things take time and I don’t want to take time off of school and work for this. Am I being selfish and paranoid, or should I set up some parameters before I devote any more time to this?

Nope, it’s reasonable to say that you can’t take time away from work and school for this. (Obviously, this is heavily cultural though; there are cultures that would absolutely expect you to do it.)

I do think that when you’re living in your parents’ house, you should try to be as accommodating as possible to requests for help, even if it’s the sort of thing that you described (i.e., beyond normal chores). It’s part of acknowledging how much your parents have put into supporting you over the years. But it’s not reasonable for them to expect that you’ll do professional-type work for them if it would come at the expense of your own job or school.

That said, I think you’re muddying the waters by asking to be paid. It’s hard to say you don’t have time for this and then say you’ll find the time if they pay you. I’d stick with explaining that work and school aren’t leaving you with enough time to take on anything additional, and perhaps offering to help with a less time-consuming element if you can (like “I can do X and Y, but I’d need to limit it to that”).

2. I got chastised for not letting a company know I accepted a different job offer

I recently applied to several admin jobs and was offered a position a couple days ago, which I accepted.

One of the companies I applied to just phoned me to invite me to an interview. I thanked her for the invite but said I would like to withdraw my application as I have accepted another position elsewhere. The woman then questioned when I had found out this news and said I should have notified her. She seemed a bit annoyed.

Should I have notified her? And do I now need to go back and inform all the other companies I applied to say that I’ve found a job so they need to withdraw my application? I applied to a lot of places, so it would seem like a bit of a waste of my time especially if they were not planning to shortlist me anyway.

This situation has actually happened to me in the past, and the person on the other end of the phone just said fair enough and best of luck in your new job. So I’m a bit confused, what is the right thing to do in this situation?

Nope, don’t let one rude person throw you off. It’s absolutely not expected that you’ll notify every company you’ve applied to when you accept an offer somewhere else. If you’ve been interviewing with someone and are still in their process, it’s considerate to let them know so that they’re not still factoring you into their candidate pool. But even if you didn’t, they shouldn’t chew you out for that. And places that you’ve only submitted an application to? No one expects that. (I’d be interested in knowing how vigilant that person is about letting applicants know when they’ve been rejected…)

3. Should I chase down the stuff my new boss said I’d get before my start date?

I’m starting a new job in three weeks — I’m currently halfway through my six-week notice period. When I was offered the job, I was told to expect a hard copy of my contract in the post, look forward to being invited to for team drinks prior to my start date, and keep the Sunday before I start free for a company event (we’re an events agency, so this isn’t unreasonable).

So far, I’ve received none of these. I contacted my new boss when I handed in my notice to confirm my start date and heard nothing, so chased a week later and got back a “Yes, yes, all good, see you on your start date.” I’m cautious about chasing the other things again as I don’t want to be pushy, but I’m starting to feel cut off from a job I was originally really excited about. What would you do?

Don’t worry about following up on the drinks; it they forget about that, it’s no big deal. Do you have an electronic version of your contract? If so, that’s probably enough, but if you don’t, it’s reasonable to follow up on that. If you have a contact in HR, I’d try that person rather than your new boss, but if you don’t, I’d email the boss and say, “Sorry to bug you! I wanted to check on two things: I know you’d said to expect a hard copy of my contract in the mail, and I wanted to check on whether it’s gone out since I haven’t received it. Also, I’m holding (date) for (event) but don’t have details on it yet. Glad to attend if someone will send me info! Otherwise, I’ll just happily plan to see you on (start date).”

4. Asking for a new title in lieu of a raise

I’ve been at my current job for a year and love it. I’ve struggled with learning the business, which is completely new, and received an overall “average” review from my boss (the president of the company) last year. Nothing in the review was unexpected. We have goals set in place for the next year that are perfectly achievable, and I am confident that he is happy that I’m here and I have a good future at the company.

This is a small company and I’m the only full-time recruiter. There is one part-time recruiter – the owner’s husband – who doesn’t report to me.

My boss mentioned that we’ll have a follow-up meeting soon to discuss a raise based on my review. The thing is, money isn’t that important to me. I’m very well paid for my position, and am happy with the current salary. I’d much rather receive a new title, either Senior Recruiter, Lead Recruiter, or Recruiting Manager – the person who formerly held my position was the Recruiting Manager. Would it be unrealistic to ask for a new title in lieu of a raise this year? If not, how would I phrase it?

Nope, that’s totally fine to do! Small companies are often delighted to save money on raises if a title bump will do instead. Obviously, you don’t want to ask for a title that’s wildly out of whack with what you do, or that would cause weird inequities elsewhere in the company structure (like a change that would make you a VP when other people doing work similar to your level are all associates), but in this case it sounds pretty reasonable — especially since there’s precedent for the title in your role. That said, any reason not to ask for both?

5. My part-time job has turned full-time against my will

I started a new job about two months ago, and I was hired as a part-time employee, with an agreed upon four days, approximately 35-hour week. As of last month or so, I’ve been scheduled for approximately 45 hours a week, which is clearly overtime. I’m getting overtime pay, which is fine but I never agreed to the increase in hours. I’m still considered part-time, and as far as I know this company doesn’t have HR or offer benefits (which I’m also fine with) so a full-time promotion would do very little. I’ve hinted to my boss that I was expecting more time off than I’m currently getting, but that went unanswered. What I really want is my part-time schedule back. How do I get that now that the overtime has become the norm?

Stop hinting! Be direct. Say this: “When I was hired on, it was a part-time job — 35 hours a week. I was happy to help out with extra hours this past month, but I can’t continue that schedule permanently. Can we get me back to the part-time schedule we initially set?”