Blue Apron will feed you dinner tonight

Potato & English Pea Samosas

Potato & English Pea Samosas witih Saag and Cilantro Chutney

And now a break to talk about a sponsor…

I like to cook and I love to eat, but I hate, hate, hate figuring out what to make for dinner night after night after night. I’ve long felt that if I can’t have a live-in chef on hand to cook me meals to order (which would obviously be the right solution, if one were able to pull it off), the next best thing would to have someone do all the work of figuring out dinner and obtaining the ingredients, so that all I had to do was cook it. (And eat it!)

Blue Apron is basically exactly that. They’re a delivery service that delivers farm-fresh ingredients for delicious, chef-designed recipes directly to your doorstep. You don’t need to make a trip to the store, and you’ll receive in everything you need in precisely the right amounts, along with instructions for preparing it. So this is basically my dream – someone else is doing all the work that I don’t want to do, and leaving me the parts I enjoy.

Fresh Soba Noodle Salad

Fresh Soba Noodle Salad with Asparagus and Cucumber

Blue Apron gives you the option of order a two-person plan (one delivery a week, with three meals for two) or a family plan (one or two deliveries a week, with two or four meals for four). Each meal is less than $10 per person, with free shipping. And you can input all your dietary restrictions and food preferences so that you don’t get meals you don’t like or can’t eat. Everything shows up at your door in a temperature-controlled box so it will stay fresh even if you’re not home when it arrives.

Muffuletta-Style Grilled Cheese

Muffuletta-Style Grilled Cheese with Baby Romaine and Pistachio Salad

The coolest thing about Blue Apron is that it gets me cooking things that I wouldn’t have made otherwise, so I actually learn new ways of cooking things that I can then incorporate into my repertoire going forward. They actually got me to make samosas (see photo to left), which aren’t nearly as difficult as I’d assumed they would be. And the samosas had an accompanying cilantro chutney which I’m considering making by the vat and possibly just drinking straight.

They also have some pretty great kitchen equipment in their marketplace, including the large maple cutting board and super helpful set of tiny bowls pictured below. Those bowls have made my cooking prep look like I am a pro.

If you’re interested in trying it out, Blue Apron is offering two free meals on your first order; just sign up here. And there’s no commitment – you can skip or cancel the service at any time, so give them a try!

Look at these tiny bowls!

Look at these tiny bowls!

This large maple cutting board is quite luxurious.

This large maple cutting board is quite luxurious.


Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Blue Apron. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

a friend is aggressively trying to get a sales lead from me, I was offered a new job but they won’t tell me the salary, and more

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

1. My boyfriend’s friend is aggressively trying to get a sales lead from me

A guy from my boyfriend’s gaming group is going way overboard trying to contact me because he wants me to introduce him to people at my company. Two days ago, I got Facebook friend request from Guy. I don’t know Guy. Boyfriend is a mutual friend, so I ask Boyfriend and he says “oh, that’s Guy from Gaming group. I don’t think you’ve met him. Weird.” So I decline the friend request.

Yesterday,I see that Guy was looking at my profile on LinkedIn. Later during the day yesterday, I get a voicemail on my private, internal, company phone from Guy. All it says is “Hi OP! this is Guy, Boyfriend’s friend that you ran into at Restaurant a year ago (so I have met him?). I got a new job at a new company and was wondering if you’d put me in contact with people at YourCompany. Thanks, bye.”

At this point, I’m uncomfortable, annoyed, and concerned how he got my work number (he’d literally have to call random support lines at my company until someone put him through without screening it with me – which is our normal protocol). So I didn’t deal with it yesterday – I mean, so far it’s been maybe 24 hours for this whole thing to play out.

This morning, I see that Guy looked at my Linkedin profile again, looked at my personal website (which I have a link to on Linkedin), and emailed my personal inbox (which is on my website). AGAIN, the email basically says “Sorry to bother you, and sorry if it was inappropriate for me to call you before emailing. Can you put me in contact with the Tea Buyer at YourCompany? I won’t tell them you gave me their number.”

Based on his signature line, I can see he is in Sales at a Tea Company… so I’m assuming he’s trying to sell us things (but he still didn’t tell me that). How would you respond? We’re in our mid-20s, so I can’t help but think he may just be a bit clueless and could benefit from some candid feedback. But honestly, this was bad from step one of “Facebook request to network” to the final step of “I’ll keep it a secret if you give me their information.” I don’t know where to start if I were to give feedback. Right now, the plan is just to say “I don’t mix personal and professional life, so I can’t help you out. Sorry.” and leave it at that.

I think that’s fine. Or you could say, “Our tea buyers prefer not to get unsolicited sales pitches” (if that’s true) or just “I don’t think I’m able to help — sorry.”

If you want to, you could preface that with something like, “Whoa, that’s a lot of messages in a 24-hour period. I don’t know if you realize that that’s going to read as overly aggressive to a lot of people!” But be aware that many people are distinctly Not Grateful for feedback that tells them they did something wrong, and he might be a snot about it.

2. I was offered a new position but they won’t tell me what the pay is

I work in the medical field in a private clinic. Our field is growing and I’ve been asked to move into a trainer role and officially train new hires, while continuing my current duties as well. I have option of turning down this position. I would be paid for the training and receive a bonus after six months, but the regional director said to my boss and I that she couldn’t disclose what my additional pay would be or the bonus. If a trainee makes a mistake and I don’t catch it, I haven’t been told either how that would affect the additional pay or bonus. The regional director is asking if I would consider the position. I said that I couldn’t make a decision because of the lack of information.

I’ve been training two new hires in an unofficial capacity for the past six weeks and am still waiting to be paid. My employer agreed to pay me extra for this. I’ve asked about the pay and was told HR is still verifying that I really did train two new hires, and my manager and I have filled out stacks of additional paperwork for documentations. My fear is if I accept officially without any salary and bonus documentation, my company could easily not pay me anything extra.

Yeah, they can’t offer you a new role and expect to keep the pay a secret from you. That’s ridiculous. Say this to them: “I’m very interested in taking this on, but of course I need to know specifics about the pay. When will you be able to share that with me?” If you’re again told that they can’t disclose it (?!!?), ask them why. That doesn’t make any sense, and I would be very wary of accepting this until that’s worked out and in writing — otherwise you could find yourself receiving no additional pay at all.

Read an update to this letter here.

3. Timing my resignation when we have upcoming layoffs

I have been working at a large company for almost two years, and have recently decided that I’d like to relocate to be closer to family. I’m planning to wait until the fall, since my 401K won’t be vested till August.

However, our department is facing a round of layoffs that are happening in early July. I don’t think my specific position is in danger of being eliminated, since it’s fairly specific and on a smaller team within the larger department. Should I tell my manager that I plan on leaving before the layoffs happen? The timing seems a bit complicated. A friend said she thought I should tell someone, since they could keep my job over someone else more committed to the company long term, but it does seem like they’d be eliminating based on position, rather than the specific people in roles now. I have good relationships with my managers and coworkers here, and would like to handle this in the best way possible.

This is tricky. If you definitely don’t want to leave until your 401K vests in August, you risk being pushed out earlier if you speak up now. On the other hand, your friend is right that it could end up saving someone else’s job. You’re right that companies usually eliminated positions based on roles — but sometimes it does come down to specific people, and depending on specifics that I don’t have, if they’re in dire straits, they might be jump at the chance to save costs in your position and not have to cut someone else. (Sometimes too, in a situation like this, a company will move an existing employee into the role you’re vacating and cut their old position, thus keeping the person around.)

This all depends on information I don’t have and which you probably can’t predict. You’re going to have to make the calculation based on (a) how much you need to stay through August, (b) the likelihood that they’d push you out a month earlier than you want to leave, (c) how much you trust your manager to handle this the way you hope she will, and (d) whether you think you could negotiate to keep your August vesting even if they do want to push you out earlier.

4. How do I tell my boss I can’t travel for two weeks because I’m attending a film festival outside of work hours?

I have a great job that I’ve been in for about a year, and for the most part I’ve been really happy here. I’m given a lot of flexibility in my day-to-day working life, I have a great relationship with my boss and coworkers, and I’ve made a pretty big impact in my role so far.

Because a lot of our customers are located overseas, some of our staff have to travel frequently. In the last month, I’ve had to travel twice on very short notice. I should stress that this is not supposed to be part of my role, but on both occasions I was able to help out the company by being able to travel when no one else was available. I find work travel very stressful, but since I don’t generally have a lot of commitments at home I’m usually able to be quite accommodating.

Due to some inside info that I have, I strongly suspect some more travel is on the horizon and I’m going to be asked — again, at the last minute — to travel internationally in the next few weeks. The trouble is that this timeline conflicts with an event on my personal calendar that means a lot to me, but probably doesn’t seem that significant to my boss.

Outside of work, I am super into movies, and the highlight of my year is approaching: our city’s annual film festival, which runs for two weeks. I’ve been attending this thing for more than 10 years, and generally I will try to see as many films as I can, which means I’m usually seeing back-to-back movies every night after work and on the weekend. I absolutely love it and look forward to it all year.

Aside from the fact that I’ve already spent more than $500 on my season ticket to this festival, I would be devastated if I had to miss out on it. But I feel like if I get asked to travel at the last minute again, it’s going to sound like a pretty frivolous reason to say no. How do I explain to my boss that I won’t be able to travel because I want to watch movies? Should I be vague and just say that I have a personal reason for not being able to travel? What would you recommend?

You could absolutely just be vague and say, “I have a bunch of personal commitments outside of work during these two weeks that I’m not able to break.” I don’t think you need to get into details; it should be sufficiently to simply say this.

But you could also try to ward this off now before it even comes up, by saying to your boss, “Hey, I know you’ve asked me to cover some travel in the past, so I wanted to give you a heads-up that I definitely can’t travel (date) to (date) because I have a bunch of evening commitments during that period.”

5. Will switching to a job with a lower-sounding title look like a demotion?

I am looking to transition into the nonprofit world, and I wondered about changes in title that would appear to be a downgrade. For example, in my current entry-level job, I am a teapot coordinator, but there are a couple jobs I am interested in locally with titles like “teapot assistant,” with similar work to what I’m doing now. These jobs then report to a teapot coordinator.

Would taking one of these jobs appear to be a demotion on my resume in the future, and is this something I would address in the interview process? I truly don’t mind going for an “assistant” title if the work is worthwhile, but years down the road, I wouldn’t want the next interviewer to assume it was a demotion. The actual jobs themselves look promising and I am interested in the work–just wanted a hiring manager’s thoughts on the title transition.

I wouldn’t worry about that too much. “Coordinator” and “assistant” are often used pretty interchangeably at junior levels in nonprofits, and it should be clear from the bullet points describing your accomplishments at each job that the work wasn’t a step back.

weekend free-for-all – June 11-12, 2016

Eve and Olive againThis comment section is open for any non-work-related discussion you’d like to have with other readers, by popular demand. (This one is truly no work and no school. If you have a work question, you can email it to me or post it in the work-related open thread on Fridays.)

Book recommendation of the week: Modern Lovers, by Emma Straub. It’s about three former bandmates who used to be cool but now must deal with aging, teenage kids, marital strife, and New York real estate. Straub is funny and smart, and her writing locks into your brain in a way I find irresistible. I loved this.

* I make a commission if you use that Amazon link.

I feel weird about turning down jobs and interviews, telling an interviewer I want to open my own business, and more

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

1. I feel weird about turning down jobs and interviews

I have had several situations arise lately where I ended up withdrawing from the interview process after I developed concerns about the position or company. Each time, I don’t think I handled it well.

The first was with a small, family-owned insurance company. I interviewed with one of the family members. During the phone and in-person interviews (which lasted about three hours), I was barely able to get a word in about my qualifications. I did get to hear her life story. At the end, I was basically told to name my price salary-wise. I tiptoed around the question and then dodged all of their calls/emails after that.

Next, I interviewed with a private youth education program. After a successful phone interview and in-person interview, I was waiting to hear if I made it to the final round. During this time, I reached out to a trusted contact who is in the same field, in the same market, and what they shared about the program and the leadership didn’t reflect well on the company.

The next day, I got an email from the HR person but didn’t see it until later in the evening and decided to reply the next day when I was well rested, but before I could reply the HR person called me and left me an extremely aggressive voicemail, saying it had been DAYS and I need to get back to them immediately. It had been less than 20 hours since the email was sent. Wanting to handle it better this time, I emailed the HR person back and said that after much consideration, I needed to remove myself from consideration. (The final interview would have required I take an entire day of PTO from my current job.) A few days later, I got an email from the person who would have been my boss, asking if more money would do the trick. I didn’t respond because I honesty don’t know how to turn down that much money and didn’t want to bad mouth her coworker and company or reveal what was told to me by my contact.

Is it just me that finds saying “no thanks” to a job hard?

Nope, it’s definitely not just you — but it’s worth working to get over it because there’s no reason to feel weird or bad about turning down a job or removing yourself from consideration. In fact, that should be a regular part of the process, because hiring processes are two-way streets and part of the point is for you to assessing them just as much as they’re assessing you. And just like they cut candidates from consideration at every step in their process, it’s normal for you to decide at any point that it doesn’t make sense to consider talking.

And believe me, employers are very used to this. It’s a normal part of doing business, and they shouldn’t be shocked or confused or devastated.

Just conduct yourself pleasantly and professionally. Use words like “thanks so much for talking with me, but I don’t think the position is the right fit for me” or “I really appreciate your time, but wanted to let you know that I’m going to focus on other prospects instead.” But do get back to people, because just ghosting them will make you look a little unprofessional (just like ghosting from their side is). And you never know — they might have a job you want some day, or your contact there might move to a company where you do want to work. So don’t leave them hanging with no response.

2. Can I tell my interviewer that I hope to open my own business at some point?

In job interviews, I’m often asked about where I see myself in the future careerwise. Is it okay to tell the hiring manager that I plan to own and operate my own business?

Well, you’re basically announcing that you don’t plan to stick around. Usually when interviewers ask this question, they’re trying to get an understanding of how this job would fit into your longer-term career goals. There are certainly some jobs where it wouldn’t matter if you’re planning to do something totally different in a couple of years — but there are a lot where that would put you at a disadvantage.

3. Should I remove my bachelor’s degree from my resume and just list my master’s?

I’ve read your advice that people are better off leaving a University of Phoenix degree off their resume because of its reputation. This makes me wonder if in my case I should leave my BS off my resume. I got my bachelor’s from Excelsior College in Liberal Studies and I know they may not have the best reputation. I had gone to college earlier but dropped out after three years. I went to Excelsior just to get an accredited bachelor’s degree that I needed for my work at the time.

I’ve since decided to change career paths. In May, I graduated with a master’s in Engineering from a state university. I’m now looking for jobs. I see three negatives with my BS degree. First, it is unrelated to my master’s degree. Secondly, it is from a school that may not have the best reputation. Thirdly, the degree date gives a clue that I’m older than most applicants. Would it be a red flag if I didn’t have my bachelor’s degree on my resume?

Excelsior is a nonprofit school. The reputation problem that schools like University of Phoenix have is linked to their being for-profit schools (well, and also scamming their students and charging way more than higher-quality schools do). Nonprofit schools, even if they don’t have the absolute strongest academics, are just in a different (and better) tier of schools. You don’t need to remove it from your resume. (It would also look odd to list a master’s without listing the bachelor’s.)

Also, it’s very normal to leave off the dates of your degrees if you’re, say, 30 or older (that’s a very rough guideline, and it’s not particularly problematic to do it before then, just pretty unusual).

4. I left my job, then went back to it, and I’m worried about my resume

After working at my first job out of college for a few years (Company A), I came across an opportunity that I thought would be a great next step. However, once I started in my new role at the new company (Company B), the job turned out to be very different from what was described to me in the interview process. I was miserable at work each day, and considering applying elsewhere, but I had only been at the new job for about four months. I got a call from Company A around that time asking if I would be at all interested in returning. They addressed the reasons I left the position and offered to move me into a new position. It seemed like the perfect solution to my issues at the time, and I took them up on their offer to return.

Now, though, I am wondering how to frame this on my resume should I decide to look for new opportunities in the future. I don’t want to try to hide the gap on my resume, but I do not want to draw attention to it either. I wasn’t at Company B long enough to include it on my resume, but I am not sure how to list the dates for Company A. Should these be listed exactly as they were? Like the below?

Company A
12/2010 – 01/2013
05/2013 – Present

I assume if it is listed this way, everyone will ask about the gap. I am afraid I messed up my job history for the rest of my career. Any advice for how best to handle something like this?

You have not messed up your work history! This stuff happens. If it’s a whole pattern of it happening all the time, that would raise questions. But once? No one is going to care, I promise you.

It’s fine to list it the way you have it here. With two different titles for each sets of dates, lots of people won’t even ask about the four-month gap in between. If they do, you can say that you left the company for another job but were lured back. (And it will make sense that the other one isn’t on your resume since it was so short-term.)

update: my boss gave everyone a Christmas gift but me

Two Christmases ago, in a round-up of weird office holiday stories, a reader shared a story of her boss giving each of her coworkers at a holiday lunch a $100 gift card and pointedly leaving her out. The story made it into this compilation of workplace holiday disasters. Now, we have an update!

Well… Today was her last day.

Her assistant went around earlier this week, collecting money for a gift. 50 bucks each! I refused, not only because of the incident above but because of the principle of not gifting up.

Lo and behold, the boss comes to me yesterday, demanding to know why I hadn’t ponied up for a gift to her and “who do I think I am?!?” for not putting 50 bucks into the pot (her assistant isn’t a big fan of discretion).

I am rather proud to say that I kept any and all snarky comments to myself and just smiled.

…while mentally remembering her inclusion on AAM’s “worst of” list.

me on a podcast, and other places too

Look, it’s Ask a Manager in a bunch of places other than here —

* I’m interviewed on this week’s episode of the Copeland Coaching podcast. We talk about interviewing, how to negotiate for more money, working in nonprofits, and more. You can listen to it here.

* Bravo’s website featured AAM again — this time delving into the letter from earlier this week about inviting your boss to dinner at your house.

* An Ask a Manager letter was featured in this column from Slate last week, about how typos matter less as you advance in your career.

* The Billfold took a more detailed look at an Ask a Manager letter too, in this case the one from a couple of weeks ago about being paid bimonthly versus every two weeks.

open thread – June 10-11, 2016

It’s the Friday open thread! The comment section on this post is open for discussion with other readers on anything work-related that you want to talk about. If you want an answer from me, emailing me is still your best bet*, but this is a chance to talk to other readers.

* If you submitted a question to me recently, please don’t repost it here, as it may be in the to-be-answered queue :)

new hire said I’m too relaxed to be a manager, coworkers keep calling me the “compliance lady,” and more

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

1. New hire said I’m too relaxed to be a manager

I recently had four new staff members join my team, as did the other three managers in our company. As with all new starters, we conduct a “temperature check” a couple of months in to ascertain their thoughts on the training modules, their team, their manager, etc. Feedback is anonymous, of course, but at least one of my new hires stated that I am “too relaxed to be a manager.”

While I am aware that I am more laid back than some of our other managers, I have never felt that this has made me incompetent at my job. In fact, I take (some) pride in the fact that staff are comfortable around me and that my approach has enabled me to develop good relationships and good work habits from some difficult staff members. However, this feedback has made me acutely aware that a casual approach doesn’t work for everyone, and that I need to demonstrate a more authoritarian manner. How should I change my behaviors to be “less relaxed” without micromanaging?

Well, wait. The fact that one person — one new person who doesn’t know you well — said this doesn’t mean it’s definitely true and something you need to change. It’s worth reflecting on the feedback and thinking about whether there’s merit to it, but it doesn’t sound like you’ve done that — it sounds like you’re just taking one new person’s feedback as gospel, and that would be a mistake.

Instead, ask yourself how your current style is working. Do people have clear expectations? Do they get regular feedback, both good and bad? When you have a concern about someone’s work, do you address it clearly, quickly, and straightforwardly? Are problems resolved pretty quickly or do they fester? Do you have frustrations with people’s work that they don’t know about? Does work get done well and on time? What kind of work is your team producing overall and what kind of results are they getting? Are they hitting/exceeding their goals, or coming up short?

The answers to those questions are what will tell if you need to change something.

(And frankly, if someone needs a very authoritarian management style from you, they might not be the right person for your team, if things are otherwise going well.)

2. My coworkers keep calling me the “compliance lady”

I am the only person in my office in this type of role (teapot compliance officer), but my colleagues refer to me as the “compliance lady.” I am referred to in this manner both verbally and in written correspondence, internally and externally, by both men and women. No other role in my office is referred to in short hand such as this. Personally, I feel the term “compliance lady” is a little demeaning as it doesn’t reflect the effort I’ve put in to my career over the years, and I also wonder if they would refer to me in a similar fashion if I were a man. Also, perhaps this is just my own etymology, but to me the word “lady” indicates a woman of a certain age, whereas I am only in my mid-30s!

We are a relatively small office with an informal culture which I normally appreciate, but I find this annoying and it gets under my skin every time it happens. Is there a way to address this without coming across super high strung, or is this just a weird quirk of my office that I should let go?

Well, they might call you the “compliance guy” if you were a man. Part of it is that “compliance officer” sounds pretty formal, and I can understand people wanting something more casual for casual communications. But they don’t need to make it gendered; “compliance person” would do just fine. And particularly in written communications, or with people outside your office, there’s no reason they can’t use your actual title.

I think you can stamp it out, but you’ll need to decide if it’s worth the effort it may take. I’d start by saying to the biggest offenders, “Hey, would you mind not calling me that? I don’t mind ‘compliance person,’ but the ‘lady’ thing feels unnecessarily gendered. Thank you.” Or if you don’t want to get into it being gendered, you could just say, “I actually prefer not to be called that.”

3. How do I explain I’m moving because my house is crumbling?

I live in Connecticut, where currently we have a rapidly growing epidemic of crumbling house foundations. (If you want to read the details of this issue, here’s a good New York Times article on it.)

I fear we may have an entire area of the state full of collapsing foundations soon. My condo has this problem. I’m dealing with this the best I can. One choice I will have to make in the near future is this: Do I stay or do I walk away? Those are the only two options I can see at the moment. Hopefully a more appealing option appears soon.

If I decide to walk away, I will seize the opportunity to move to another part of the country. How far in advance from my anticipated move should I submit my resume? What’s the best way to answer questions on why I’m relocating? I don’t want to come across as someone who walks away when things get hard.

I’m already leaning towards pulling the escape hatch. I’ve only just found out about this a month ago and the stress is destroying my health. Any advice or help would be appreciated.

You’re not going to come across as someone who walks away when things get hard! You’re going to come across as someone who made a perfectly understandable decision that no one is going to hold against you. Also, sometimes it makes sense to walk away when things get hard! You’re not in a marriage with Connecticut; you’re allowed to decide you want to leave. Seriously, non-issue.

That said, you’d ideally explain why you’re moving by focusing on why you’re picking the area you’re moving to. Employers want to see that you’re excited about moving to their location and aren’t going to change your mind six months after you start there — so focus on what’s drawing you to them, rather than what’s pushing you away from your current home.

I’d start applying now, if you’re serious about moving this year. Long-distance job searches can take a long time, unless you’re in a really in-demand field where people are being snatched up.

4. Should I let my company fire me so I can get severance?

I was told by my manager about a month ago that I could either risk being fired immediately due to “poor performance” or take reduced responsibilities and look for a new position for 45 days. Well, obviously I wanted to keep receiving a paycheck, so I took the reduced responsibilities.

I found a new position and I am about to accept the offer (just making sure no last-minute offers come from another job before I send the signed letter). I decided to set my start date the Monday after my last day at my current job. This will allow me to complete the pay cycle.

When I informed my manager of my plan, she stated that I could still choose termination (I have the choice to resign or termination where I get severance on the last day). My wife would like me to take the termination and get the severance, but I do not want it to affect my new job. It is important to note I was not asked on the application or any interviews if I had been terminated or asked to resign. The reason I gave for leaving was to pursue my career goals and that the current position had changed and no longer met my career goals(which is actually truthful).

If I am terminated from my old job before I start my new job, can it come back to bite me?

You mean with the new job? No. But it could impact you in the future, in that you may be asked on future job searches about whether you’ve ever been fired, and you’d need to answer yes. Similarly, if your departure is recorded in your current company’s records as a firing, that’s what will get reported to reference-checkers in the future. It sounds like if you want it recorded as a resignation, you’d have to give up the severance.

5. My boss is pushing me to work weekend days, despite our initial agreement

I work two part-time jobs. The first one I’ve had for two and a half years, and the second one I’ve been working at for a year. In order to make the schedules work after an issue with bus schedules and not having a car, I work job #1 on weekends and job #2 Monday through Friday.

I gave my two-weeks notice to job #1 a couple weeks ago. Yesterday I let my boss at job #2 know about that because a coworker found out about my leaving job #1, and as she has a tendency of outing me on everything, I was worried my boss would find out and could get upset. I have the worker personality that just goes with whatever the boss says and am always worried about offending people. When I told my boss, I tried to explain that I still wanted my weekends off as we had agreed when I started working, and she told me she would try but that she really needs help on weekends and offered to give me a Tuesday or whatever off when she needs me on a weekend. I nodded my head and said okay when she said it, because I didn’t know that I could say no and keep my original availability.

My boss is nice but she has a tendency of using people as often as possible and this is my first time in a year having a chance at a day off. Is there any way to retract my agreement or am I now stuck?

It would be easier if you’d held firm in the first place, but you can absolutely push back now. Say this: “I need to stick with my current schedule that we’ve agreed to. I have other commitments on the weekend now, and still only available Monday through Friday, like we originally agreed.”

The problem, of course, if that it sounds like you’ll want to cave if she pushes back. So you’ll need to resolve that you’re willing to stand up for yourself and not agree to anything asks of you. Keep repeating to yourself, “This is reasonable, and this has been our agreement all along.”

my boss refused to pay my husband’s invoice for contract work

A reader writes:

I have a tricky situation. Previously this year, my husband was hired by my boss to do some contract video work for the company I work for. I was in charge of the art direction and we completed the assignment to (what I thought) were my boss’s specifications. My office had also hired another vendor to complete the bulk of the filming and post production. My boss handled most of the art direction for them, and I filled in as needed.

As we went into post production, the other vendor and my boss were unhappy with what my husband produced. I spoke with my boss to see what was wrong and any issues he had. It boiled down to he was unhappy with the art direction and the shots that resulted. I reminded him that I was responsible for the art direction and I clearly messed up and took ownership for my mistake.

After our discussion, he stated that he didn’t want to pay my husband and he asked me what we should do next. I told him he needed to talk to my husband directly as it was his decision to hire him and I thought it was inappropriate for him to ask me to handle this just because he’s my spouse. He said he would, and then never did. Obviously, I had to tell my husband the situation and he reached out to my boss to discuss the concerns and he also offered to video/photograph another project for free (the initial project was time-sensitive and could not be reshot; otherwise he would have done that.) My boss refused to get in touch with him or meet with him. My husband finally decided to drop it and take the loss. He routinely works for other departments at my company and he didn’t want to jeopardize those relationships.

Fast forward to now, and I have a new interim boss (previous boss was encouraged to leave). We’re approaching the end of the fiscal year and I would like to resubmit my husband’s invoice because I believe he did the work I was in charge of asking him to do. Is that ethical? Do I need to explain the whole situation or can I just state it’s an invoice that got lost in the process? (That happened a lot with my boss.) The fact that he is my husband adds an extra level of weird that isn’t there when he works for a different department where he is hired independent of his relationship to me.

I wrote back to this letter-writer and asked, “Was there a contract or any kind of explicit agreement that included the possibility of your husband not getting paid? Or did they spring that on him out of nowhere afterward?” The response:

This is where both parties messed up. Our office typically doesn’t ask for contracts with vendors we’ve happily done business with before, and this included my husband (in fact, he’s done work for us after my boss left.) My husband did not submit a contract to our office AND to make matters worse, there is no email trail. All of this was handled verbally in person. Obviously, in the future, both parties need to be more diligent and set protections in place.

Yeah, he definitely should have a contract that covers this kind of thing and doesn’t leave it up to clients to decide whether they feel like paying for his work or not.

Anyway, if this were a regular vendor who wasn’t married to you, I’d say that you should just go to your new boss, explain what happened previously, and say that although your old boss wasn’t happy with the work, you did agree to pay for it and you think that needs to happen now.

The problem, of course, is that you are married to this particular vendor, and it’s putting you in a really awkward position. Instead of the situation being a run-of-the-mill “requesting that we get this vendor paid” situation, it’s going to read as “your predecessor didn’t want to pay my husband, but I think he should be paid.” That’s a reasonable position for you to take, on a purely logical level. On the not entirely logical plane on which humans operate, it’s going to look a little conflict-of-interest-ish.

However, the good news here is that you don’t have to handle this at all! It’s entirely reasonable for your husband to manage this on his own, just like he would do if you didn’t work there. In fact, I’d recommend that both of you pretend that you don’t work there, and have him proceed the way he would if that were the case. That probably means that he should reach out to your new boss, explain what happened previously, and ask for the outstanding invoice to be paid. That lets him manage his own business, which is how it should work anyway, and it gets you out of dealing with a situation that there’s no way to navigate well as the spouse.

And from now on: written agreements before he starts work, especially when he’s doing work for your company, since that makes the need for clear expectations on all sides all the more important.

update: my manager doesn’t defend me from mistaken complaints

Remember the letter-writer last year whose manager wouldn’t defend her when other people had mistaken complaints about her work? Here’s the update.

Thanks for your advice! I realized through responding to comments (which were pretty vicious toward my supervisor! no one believed me that she’s actually great!) that the problem was limited to the two people in my examples. Like a lot of people, my supervisor didn’t know what to do about our director and this one coworker who is BFFs with the director and our VP, and that floundering was spilling into her trying to advise me on working with them. After it was clear that Coworker was going to complain about me anytime she was asked to do anything, we switched to having all requests come directly from my supervisor.

This worked well until my supervisor was out of the office one afternoon when Coworker came by. She asked me if there was anything I needed her to do, and I said just the one thing my supervisor had emailed her about that morning (and cc’ed me on). She said no, my supervisor had said she was going to do that herself. I said, “Hm, maybe I’m wrong” and pulled up the email, and then read the relevant part aloud that asked her to complete the task. I then asked if she needed any help with it, and she got super snippy and said she knew how to do it, it was just that my supervisor had previously said she was going to take care of it (definitely not true). I shot off a brief email to my supervisor explaining the exchange I had just had with Coworker.

At my next meeting with my supervisor, she brought up the fact that Coworker had complained about me and said I was very rude to her and that I couldn’t order her around and tell her to do things. Again, my supervisor said she didn’t actually think I’d done anything wrong, especially since she’d already gotten the whole exchange from me first. Based on the advice I’d gotten from your site, I pushed back and asked if she’d clarified for Coworker that she (my supervisor) had indeed asked Coworker to do the task. It turned out that she had actually gone to bat for me 100% and defended everything I’d said. But I gathered that after Coworker kept complaining, she had made a vague promise to talk to me about the incident, and this was her way of fulfilling that promise. I pushed back again and said, so was there something specific that she wished I’d done differently or could do differently in the future? She stopped and thought a minute and said there really wasn’t anything I could have done differently except to do what Coworker wanted, which was to say no, she didn’t have to do anything, and then to take care of it myself, which my supervisor agreed would not really have been a good solution.

That was about six months ago and the issue has not come up again! I think she realized that it didn’t make sense to bring things up with me if there wasn’t something specific she wanted me to do differently. I still route most requests to Coworker through my supervisor, and that minimizes the drama. My supervisor and I continue to have a great working relationship, and she is a big support to me in a variety of ways. Thanks again for encouraging me to push back on this one thing!