Ask a Manager

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

1. I think one of our coworkers is intentionally putting nails in our car tires

I’m concerned that one of our employees is intentionally putting nails in our tires as some sort of retaliation for trying to hold him/her accountable for their quality of work. The four most senior team members in our department (myself included) have found nails in our tires within a small time span of several weeks. They were all the exact same type of nail, and none of us recall driving in or around any areas where nails would typically be found. I think it’s too much of a coincidence, considering we are the only ones that ruffle anyone’s feathers in the sense that we have taken steps to try to address the poor quality of work done by our recent batch of hires.

This recent batch of hires was brought on-board by our former management team with no interview or screening process. We have a new management team now, but we’re stuck with the new batch of hires who have proven to be untrainable, contribute to a very toxic work environment, and who have not-so-subtly indicated to us the fact that they think we’re too young for the positions we hold. Since they know we have higher salaries, are better off financially, drive nice cars, etc, I can see someone getting very resentful and retaliating.

I want to stay with the company largely in part because they are paying for my graduate degree, structured as a six-figure tax-free reimbursement with no strings attached. I’ve got one year left but I’m starting to worry for my safety given what has been happening.

I’m not quite sure what to do. I consider myself fortunate this time, as it only cost me $40 to patch the tire (one of my colleagues wasn’t as fortunate as they had to replace their tires at a cost of close to $1,000), but I’m thinking this could just be the beginning. This time it’s just a nail, what’s next? Keying my car? Smashing my window?

Two things: First, if this is a pattern (and it sounds like it is, if it’s happened to four of you), the four of you should insist that whatever appropriate person in your company take steps to stop it — whether it’s cameras in the parking lot or something else. Second, you’re not stuck with this toxic batch of hires — or at least your company isn’t. Push back on whoever is telling you that you’re stuck with them. Someone should be managing them, which means setting a high bar for performance and behavior and holding them to it, and enforcing consequences when it’s not met. It’s not reasonable for whoever is managing them to just throw up their hands and say “oh well.” Someone here isn’t doing their job, and it’s not just these new hires.

Read an update to this letter here.

2. Company gifts that include pork and alcohol

I saw one of your recent posts about accommodating various dietary restrictions when ordering lunches for a group of people and I thought I’d write to you about a similar issue I’m facing. Last week at work, we achieved a major milestone by completing a very important project with our biggest client. It’s taken years of hard work by all our teams to reach this point, and one of the ways in which our company rewarded us was to give each person a nice gift basket. The gift basket contains a variety of pork sausages, as well as a variety of wines and champagnes. Here’s the problem: I’m Jewish and keep kosher, as does one of my team members, and we have several coworkers of other faiths who also can’t eat pork and/or drink alcohol. In short, a good number of us couldn’t accept this gift because of our religious practices, and we honestly feel a little left out.

We’ve worked just as hard as our other coworkers, so couldn’t a little more consideration have been given into choosing a gift that everyone can partake in, or at least having other gift options available? For more context, our company is about 100 people divided up into 10 teams, and we’re all pretty well-acquainted with each other, so I don’t think ignorance of our restrictions is an excuse, or that it’s too difficult to accommodate everyone.

I mentioned my feelings to another coworker who told me that it’s our fault for “excluding ourselves” and that nobody is “forcing” us to practice our religions this way. I find that response pretty insensitive, but now it’s got me second-guessing myself. I’m pretty close to the person responsible for arranging the gifts — should I say something about it (even though it’s already too late), or move on? Are we right to feel left out by this, or is it not a big deal?

Yeah, the gift is thoughtless. Well-meant, no doubt, but thoughtless nonetheless, particularly in the context you’ve described.

If the person in charge of selecting the gifts is at all competent at her job, she’d appreciate a heads-up that the gift posed a religious conflict for a bunch of you. It’s true that in social situations, you don’t get to dictate what kind of gift someone gives you, but this is a bit different — this kind of thing at work is ultimately a retention and morale strategy, so a decent company is going to want to know that it’s doing the opposite of boosting morale.

I’d say it this way: “It’s great to get recognition for our work, but I wanted to mention to you that there are a bunch of us on staff who can’t eat pork or drink alcohol for religious reasons. I’m hoping the company might make a note of it for the future so we don’t inadvertently leave people out.”

And as for your coworker’s response that you’re “excluding yourselves,” that’s more than insensitive; it’s ridiculous — so ridiculous that you should discount it (and future opinions from this person) entirely.

3. My manager chastised me for doing something she had okayed

So I had asked my manager in advance to leave an hour early in order to move. Granted, I was asking to leave an event where that usually is not allowed, but I asked a couple weeks before and she could have said no. However, she said yes, but only if all problems or issues had been solved. They were, and before I left I asked her if there was anything else, and she said I could go.

The next day, she invites me into her office and tells me, “I think I hold you to a higher standard than you hold yourself, and I shouldn’t have let you go early.” I was very offended by that first phrase. In the same breath, she told me that there were no problems once I had gone. All my work was done, I asked if there was anything else to do before I left, and she said I could go. So basically she reprimanded me for something she told me I could do. Do I let her know that she offended me, or do I just let it go?

Making a point about being offended isn’t the way to go; that makes it more about your emotions than it should be. But it would be reasonable to say something like, “I wanted to follow up with you about our conversation the other day. I took you at your word that it was okay for me to leave once I had all my work handled, and I trusted that you’d tell me if I shouldn’t go. So I’m concerned to hear that you did in fact think it was a problem. Are you saying I shouldn’t have asked at all, even though you told me it was fine?”

Frankly, it does sound like that’s what she’s saying— that you shouldn’t have asked at all. But it’s on her that she okayed it, and it’s not reasonable for her to turn around and blame you for that.

4. What can I do about the bad manager at my old job?

What do you do when you have tried talking to upper management and even HR and the district manager about how your manager is and nothing has happened?

It has been two weeks that I no longer work in the job that I am talking about. In my exit interview, I told HR the reality of how problematic the manager was. Nine people left during her one year of management. I heard from my coworkers who still work there that she is either transferring or leaving the company, but she has been writing up people left and right for things that should not be written up. She has had so many complaints against her and never once have I seen her get reprimanded. I believe it is because of her close friendship with the district manager. I have considered calling HR and following up, but I am not sure if that is the best course of action or just letting it play itself out.

You don’t work there anymore, right? This is no longer your problem to solve! You gave your input, and now it’s up to them what they do with it. But if you’re no longer an employee, you don’t really have any standing to follow up on this or otherwise stay involved. Move on mentally, and accept that it’s going to play out however it plays out … and that you shouldn’t be following along because you should make a clean break.

5. Is it bad to use parentheses in cover letters?

While I was taking a break from writing cover letters, I looked up a couple examples of good ones on your site. Something I noticed surprised me; there two letters (one, two) that use at least one or two sets of parentheses. My natural writing style mimics my speaking style, and I use parentheses in the same way that these letter writers do. I’ve been struggling to edit them out my cover letters because they make a lot of sense to me (not in a grammatical sense, but in a story-telling sense). See!

What are your thoughts on this? Is it dependent on industry? The companies I’m applying to are in very relaxed industries, not legal or finance or the like.

Parentheses aren’t inherently bad in cover letters. You should be judicious about their use, but there’s no no-parentheses-in-cover-letters rule.

If they help you write a more effective or personal or conversational cover letter, parentheses are fine to use. You obviously don’t want to use them in seven different places, but once or twice isn’t going to be an issue.

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

1. Employer wants us to come to work even though our bathrooms won’t be working

I work at a university, and we received notice last week that water will be shut off for all buildings on our street on Tuesday.. We are expected to come to work (there is a strict “no work-from-home” policy) and to use restrooms at nearby university buildings, the closest one being a block away. My office is on the fourth floor of what used to be a house, so there is no elevator (unless I go down one floor, cross over to the adjoining building, and take the old and extremely slow elevator from there). This means that whenever I need a bathroom, I will need to spend a minimum of 5-10 minutes trying to get to one.

Our HR department tends to be very by-the-books, so I suppose the availability of facilities in other university-owned buildings covers any potential OSHA violations, so this isn’t a question of “is this legal.” I’m interested in whether you think HR is making the right call by mandating that we come to work rather than making an exception to the work-from-home policy.

(For what it’s worth, I am considering asking my manager to make a personal exception or to allow me to use PTO. I think it’s absurd and a huge waste of time to have to leave the building and scale four flights of stairs twice every time I need a restroom.)

Nope, I think they’re making a bad call. It’s not reasonable to ask people to take a 5-10-minute (or longer) hike when they need a bathroom. And how is this going to apply to people with disabilities who may not be able to easily accommodate that?

I’m also not sure it’s legal. OSHA requires bathrooms to be available “at every worksite,” although I’m not sure how they’re defining that. They also mandate that “employers allow employees prompt access to bathroom facilities,” and that “restrictions on access must be reasonable, and may not cause extended delays.”

2. Are you supposed to stretch the truth on your resume?

Are you supposed to pad your resume somewhat when applying for jobs? I just recently landed a new job six months ago, and the resume I sent to my now-boss was a 100% valid list of projects I completed and examples of going above and beyond. In other words, I didn’t lie or stretch the truth about my experience or skill levels.

So far two other employees have been hired in my department. It came to light that both of them lied on their resumes to some degree, and the jobs they were hired for were well above their experience level. One has been fired, and the other is there still but floundering. My remaining coworker has the same job title as me, and I can’t help but feel resentment that we are getting paid roughly the same but I have more experience. She accidentally let it slip that she worked with tea pot makers in her last job, but never actually worked as one. In my experience, it’s common to liaison with other departments at any job, but that doesn’t mean you gain the knowledge to be competent at their position through interacting with them. My boss and others have also voiced concerns privately that she padded her resume to get the job.

I’m not sure if I should be kicking myself now, as I feel I somewhat undersold myself and question if I could have gotten a better job. On the other hand, my skills and experience are not being questioned like my other coworkers, and that’s a position I never want to be in.

What?! No, you shouldn’t be kicking yourself, and no, you are not supposed to stretch the truth when applying for jobs. Your two coworker are perfect examples of why — one has been fired for lying on her resume, and the other is struggling and in poor standing.

Misrepresenting your experience can seriously harm your career for all the reasons I talk about here.

3. Coworker keeps commenting on my pregnant body

I work at a growing medical center, I am the owner’s assistant/ medical biller/ accounts payables and receivables. I have been with the company for about three years. I am five months pregnant. My weight is normally around 118 and my height is 5’0. At this point in my pregnancy, I’ve gained 10 pounds, which according to my doctor is a good amount of weight at this point in the pregnancy.

Well, the director of operations, who is the owner’s right hand, has been constantly commenting about my body in front of my coworkers. She says things to me like “you’ve got a turtle body since you got pregnant” and “what a strange body you have now, you’re so wide.” It makes me very uncomfortable. Is this okay? Because I really think those comments are very unnecessary whether it be in front of others or when I’m alone with her. Please advise.

Hell, no, that’s not okay. That’s incredibly rude, and you have every right to tell her to stop. The next time she makes one of these comments, say this: “Jane, please don’t comment on my body. Thank you.” If she continues after that, say, “I’ve asked you not to comment on my body. You’re being incredibly rude.” You can also try, “Why would you say that?” and “I really don’t want to hear your thoughts on my body. Please stop.”

4. How different should your thank-you notes be from each other, when sending several of them?

I read your post on writing multiple thank-you notes for multiple interviews. I was wondering how different you should make those notes from one another. How personalized do they need to be? Can you write everyone a note saying essentially the same thing, or would that look insincere?

You definitely don’t want them to all say the same thing! Even if they’re going to different people, interviewers will often share them with each other, and you don’t want them to look like form letters.

Keep in mind that post-interview thank-you notes aren’t really about thanking them; they’re about following up on the conversation and reiterating your interest and enthusiasm. You can make each note different by building on whatever was discussed in the most recent conversation.

5. Sharing a personal reason for wanting to work for a nonprofit

I went through a phone interview two weeks ago with a nonprofit that deals with cancer research and awareness. During the interview, the interviewer asked me why I want to work for them. Well, I answered that it’s because I want to help them with creating more awareness for cancer, and my grandmother had the cancer and passed away three years ago. Overall, the interview went very well and she said the next steps in the hiring process would be to invite candidates to an in-person interview.

It’s been almost two weeks and she didn’t invite me for another interview. Did I make a mistake by telling her my personal reason of why I want to work there?

I doubt it. It’s pretty normal to share that kind of thing when interviewing for a health-related or cause-related nonprofit; they hear that sort of thing all the time.

That said, it’s generally going to be a stronger answer is it’s not just about a family member’s situation. Ideally you’d also talk about what appeal to you about their approach and the particular job that you’re interviewing for.

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

1. Getting sick your first week at a new job

I got sick during my first week of work. I was dragging on Friday, but attributed it to a long week of meeting new people and getting used to my routine. By Friday evening, I felt worse, and a trip to urgent care confirmed… I have strep throat.

Luckily for me, my doctor prescribed some great meds and I was able to rest up over the weekend. I was no longer contagious and was already feeling better by the end of the weekend.

But here’s my question — what the heck would I have done if this had not conveniently happened over the weekend? With strep, I know I’d have to call out sick, but what about something less contagious? And — either way — how do you go about taking a sick day (a day without pay, I’m assuming, since sick time hasn’t accrued) without it reflecting poorly on you as a new employee?

It’s certainly not ideal to be out sick your first week on the job, but sometimes this stuff happens — people get strep or break a leg or have horrible food poisoning. Even only halfway decent managers understand that this can happen, and that you can’t control the timing. The keys are to say that you’re mortified that it’s happening during your first week so that they know you’re not being cavalier about it, to make it clear it’s something like strep and not just the sniffles, and to make a real point of demonstrating your work ethic once you’re back. That last part is because the worry isn’t “how outrageous, she had strep her first week” but rather “is she someone who’s going to call out all the time?” since they don’t know you yet. You just need to counteract those worries once you’re back.

But really, you are human and you can’t schedule illness.

2. I turned down a job offer because I didn’t want to be in an open office

Late last year, I turned down a job for which I was well suited and which offered pay and benefits that were satisfactory, and I wonder if I made a mistake. There were a few reasons I declined, but the one that accounted for about 85% of my response was that the company has an open office floor plan. I *loathe* those, and I really felt I could not do my best work in such an environment. That sounds so petty, I know, but it really mattered to me, and still does.

My refusal was prompt, polite, and non-specific, so no worries on that score. However, I always hear that everything is negotiable, so I often wonder if I should have tried to negotiate that as well. At the time I turned down the job, I told myself the employer would never entertain such a request, but I can’t help but wonder if I miscalculated. So was I wrong then, or am I wrong now?

Ugh, I wouldn’t work in an open office plan either, so I’m right there with you in turning it down.

Whether you could have negotiated for your own office depends on how senior you are. If you aren’t especially senior, it’s unlikely, unless they really, really wanted to hire you (and were willing to probably cause unrest among others at your level). It’s also the kind of thing that you might negotiate but could end up changing after the fact anyway (“a new VP is starting and we can’t justify you having a private office when she doesn’t,” etc.).

I actually wish you had told them why you were turning down the offer though. It’s good for employers to hear that they’re losing candidates over this.

3. I’m painfully bored at work

I started at a new job a few months ago and was told that when I finish work, I should ask my supervisor for more work. When I message them about needing work, the response is, “I’ll come to your desk to give you something in a minute.” The problem is that “a minute” has ranged from 15 minutes to three hours. When it’s longer periods, I’ve sent reminders, but get more of the “in a minute” response.

I’ve run out of semi-productive things to do (reading training materials, cleaning out my inbox, etc.) so the waits are becoming painfully boring, and being in limbo is miserable itself. I dread finishing work now. Is there a way to approach my supervisor about this without seeming insubordinate or insulting? (I can’t imagine anyone wanting to be told that they keep people waiting for too long when they’re busy with supervisor duties.)

I’d ask if there are bigger or longer-term projects that you can work on during your downtime in order to keep busy. If that doesn’t work, then you might need to have a conversation with your manager at some point about what’s going on — is this is a temporary situation until she’s through a busy period and then can give you bigger chunks of work that don’t require you checking in with her constantly? It’s not unreasonable to say that you’re finding yourself spending hours with nothing to do and that you’d like to find ways to stay busier. (Also, read my advice in the second letter here to the intern with nothing to do, about proposing your own projects — that’s something you should try too.)

4. How much responsibility do I have for helping to hire my replacement?

My partner and I decided that we wanted to move cities, and my manager and HR said they would keep me on in a transitional period and I could work remotely while I looked for something new and they looked for my replacement. We set an end date to full-time employment three months in the future. Great! I’m leaving (it was time), but still have a paycheck and am also able to look for a new job without fear it will get back to them. Plus I can use them for references.

Fast-forward to today: I’ve been working remotely (going up to the office once a week) for six weeks now and the first round of interviews for my position are beginning to be planned. First I was asked to look through the resumes, which ended up taking hours (there were hundreds). Now I’m being asked to spend 30 minutes on phone interviews with each person who is even a potential possibility (maybe 10–12). Now I expect they’d want me to be there in-person for final round interviews.

Originally I thought it would be beneficial to me to help with the process to get an inside view of hiring — I got this job after being an intern for the company right out of school and never went through the traditional hiring process. But I’m trying to keep everyone happy by doing my regular work (I already have too much) along with writing documentation about processes and also wrap-up projects. I need to be looking for my new job and don’t have time to work more than 40 hours like I did in the past.

If this is determined to be a priority for my limited remaining time, of course I’ll help, but I wonder if this is normal. How much should an employee reasonably be expected to help with the hiring of a replacement? I don’t want to put my foot down only for my manager/HR to be disappointed in my when I was counting on their good recommendations.

It’s perfectly reasonable for them to ask for this kind of help in hiring your replacement, but it’s not reasonable for them to expect you to do it on top of an already full workload. I’m not even sure they do expect that though — they’re probably assuming that you’ll let them know what you need to back-burner in order to make room for this. And since you haven’t spoken up about that, they’re probably assuming you’re able to fit it all in reasonably comfortably.

So speak up! Say this: “To do phone interviews with 10-12 candidates will take X amount of time, which means I won’t be able to do Y and Z. Knowing that, do you still want me involved to this extent, or would it be better for me to keep focusing on Y and Z and have someone else do the phone interviews?” In other words, just tell them what the trade-offs are and let them decide how they want you to spend your remaining time — but you should not be assuming that you just need to work tons of hours to get everything done. (If it does turn out that they expect that, that would be unreasonable and you could explain you don’t have the time remaining — but I’d start from the assumption that you just need to speak up.)

5. Is there any room for negotiating a raise here?

For most of my career, I’ve worked at large professional services firms that have a system in place for annual reviews, raises, and bonuses. At my current company, around May/June, all the reviews from your various supervisors are gathered and your counselor presents your file to a review board. In June/July, you find out your rating, and in August one of the partners tells you your raise and bonus.

Is there any room for negotiation in this process? It seems that by the time my partner gives me my raise, everything has been calculated and calibrated. I know they use some formulas based on how the business unit did and my individual rating, but the formulas are not transparent. If there is room to negotiate, when would that be? For my part, I do my best to summarize my ratings and discuss my strengths and goals with my counselor before he submits it to the review board. But that focuses on my rating and not my actual raise and bonus.

You can certainly try it, and people probably do. In June — after the reviews are gathered but probably before any money decisions are made — I’d make a case to your manager for a raise, in the same way you would at any other company. Ask for a meeting and say, “I know raises and bonuses will be announced in August. Before decisions about those are made, I’d like to make a case for a raise of $X” — and then make your case. (It sounds like you have multiple managers, but assuming there’s one person who’s in charge of stuff like your professional development, that’s who I’d talk to.)

People often end up not negotiating because they don’t feel there’s ever a natural opening for it (both with job offers and with raises). You don’t need to wait for your employer to give you an opening — you can bring up the subject yourself, and you should here.