Ask a Manager

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

1. I can hear my coworkers getting chewed out

I’m about three months in at my first job out of college. I’ve had a hard time adjusting to certain things, though reading your blog has helped immensely. The open office concept is the worst. Those of us in the cube farm can hear what goes on in the offices and vice versa. This is distracting but not a huge deal.

However, hearing everyone receiving negative feedback out in the open has me very concerned. Recently a manager blasted a coworker for not finishing a project. He didn’t close her office door. I’ve heard another of my coworkers called an idiot and get chewed out (very loudly) by another manager. Even in my previous retail job, feedback was given quietly and calmly, with no yelling or spectators. Is this normal? I haven’t been the subject of a rant yet, but it concerns me. Is there anything I can do as a relative newbie? (Background info, my manager is higher on the org chart and I’ve never heard him behave this way, but I get projects from the other managers.)

No, it’s not normal. It’s true that in open offices, you’re going to overhear people getting feedback — but those should be calm, constructive conversations, and anything really serious should happen in private.

Yelling, chewing people out, and calling someone an idiot are things that aren’t generally okay at work; if they feel like the norm in your office, there’s some real dysfunction going on. Managers who do those things typically do them because they have no idea how to manage effectively; good managers don’t need to treat people that way because if there are problems in someone’s work, they have much more effective tools to deal with it.

If anyone does end up treating you that way, I have some advice here about how to deal with it — but the more important thing is not to let this mess with your ideas of what’s normal. Terrible management has a way of reprogramming your norms so that you start to accept really awful treatment and expect it at your next job. Make sure you don’t let that happen.

2. Should I ask or tell my manager when I’m taking time off?

I have been in my position (graduate coordinator) for almost four years. Until about a year ago, I had a different supervisor (from hell). Now I am very blessed to have a wonderful supervisor. She’s fair, she’s kind, she treats our team very well, and we adore her.

With Old Supervisor, we’d have to ask for time off. We’d also have to explain why, and if she didn’t think it was a good enough reason, she’d deny it or say she’d think about it and then get back to you the day of or the day before you needed. (She treated us all like we were children on many, many levels. She micromanaged to the extreme). New Supervisor treats us like adults.

Last week, when I asked for an hour off to go to a doctor’s appointment, she laughed and said “of course,” and joked that it’s not like she’d ever say “no, you can’t go to the doctor” or take whatever time off (I’ve seen this with other members of my team – she really does treat us like adults who know what they’re doing).

Should I ask her (like last week) “can I take this hour / day off” or should I say “I’m taking the day / hour off”? I don’t want to be rude or inappropriate, but since this was the second time my supervisor joked about the permission aspect, I feel I need a new approach.

In professional jobs, it’s pretty normal to manage your own time and just give your manager a heads-up about times you’ll be away — as in “I’m leaving at 2 on Tuesdayfor a doctor’s appointment.” In some cases, people will phrase it this way: “I’m planning to take the 5th and 6th off — let me know if that poses any issues.”

There are managers who want to be asked for permission, but they tend to be (a) overly controlling managers who don’t trust that they’ve hired competent adults or (b) in jobs where scheduling and coverage is a big thing that needs to be managed centrally.

3. Interviews on casual Fridays

I know there’s bit a lot of chatter lately about dress codes and what is appropriate wear. But what about doing interviews on casual Fridays? As the one being interviewed, I always make it a point to arrive my interview nicely and well dressed – as is expected. But on a few occasions, the interview was on a casual Friday for the hiring manager/HR so there I am in my best and there they are in their jeans. This made me feel awkward – my point of view was, I took the time to look my best for you, could you not also try to present yourselves nicely to me?

I expressed this once to a friend and she said, “Why should they give up their casual day for just an interview?” I countered that they could bring a change of clothes and at least look nice for the interviews.

In the end, it doesn’t change how I will behave during the interview and I didn’t feel that the interviewers were any different than others where they were in usual office wear, but I did feel that it placed me at a weird disadvantage. What’s your opinion on this?

It’s pretty common for interview candidates to be dressed more nicely than their interviewers. It’s just … how interviews go. Rightly or wrongly, candidates are expected to wear suits to interviews in most industries (not all — more on that here). If it’s a convention in your field, you’re expected to adhere to it even if your interviewers are dressed more casually.

You’re right that it’s not particularly fair, but neither are a bunch of other things about interviewing (for example, as a candidate you can’t take a call in the middle of an interview, but your interviewer can). The process is rife with double standards! I’m not endorsing that, but it’s the reality of how it usually works.

4. Applying for a different internal role right after getting a promotion

At my performance review a couple of weeks ago, I was told I would be getting a promotion: new (way better) title, 12% raise, more creative work, the whole deal. However, it won’t begin until the start of our company’s new fiscal year, which is about 2.5 months away.

Now, I’ve just found out that someone in another department at my company is retiring (I don’t know exactly when), and there will be an opening. I’d really like to apply for this job. It’s in a department I’d rather work in and am more skilled in, with a much better manager. The people in this department tend to stay for years, if not decades. So the chance to work in this department may not come up again for a long, long time.

Am I obligated to stay in my current department and take the promotion in a couple of months? Would it be considered bad form to apply for this new position (and to take it if it’s offered to me)? If I do apply, should I let my current manager know beforehand? Of course, I don’t want to cause any bad blood with my current department or manager, but I would so much rather be in this other department!

Ooof, this is tricky and depends a lot on your manager and whether she takes this stuff personally. If your manager is reasonable, you should be able to say something like this: “I’m really excited for this promotion — it sounds great to me in lots of ways. But I want to be candid with you that hearing that the X role in department Y is opening up has thrown me — I’d love to do that work long-term. I know how rarely they have openings there and I couldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t throw my hat in the ring. If it doesn’t work out, I’d remain incredibly enthusiastic about the role here. But I wanted to talk with you about it before doing anything.”

The key here is to do what you can to prevent your manager from worrying that you’ll see the promotion as a consolation prize if you don’t get the other job or that you’ll have one foot out the door.

5. When should I mention that I’m in the military reserves?

After weeks of applications, I finally landed a phone interview with a company that I am very excited about. The work fits my background perfectly with a lot of room to grow, and the company is doing great things. Needless to say, I’m pretty excited about this opportunity. My phone interview was yesterday. Everything went very well, and I am scheduled for a Skype interview (I’m out of state) next week.

The problem? I am a drilling reservist. In and of itself not an issue, but I realized last night that it isn’t listed anywhere on my resume and I forgot to mention it in my cover letter. Should I email them right away? Should I bring it up in the follow up interview? I don’t it to look like I was intentionally hiding the information and am not sure how to bring it up.

Nope, there’s no reason to bring it up at this stage. It’s illegal for an employer to factor that information into their hiring decision, so it’s not something you need to raise now as they can’t use the information anyway (but like bringing up pregnancy at this stage, hearing it may unconsciously bias them). I’d wait until you have an offer and mention it then — and frame it as “by the way, I need to let you know I’m a military reservist” rather than “will this be okay?” since the law requires them to allow you time off for reserve duty.

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

1. Client accidentally said rude things about my team in a voicemail to me

I recently had a voicemail from a dissatisfied client with whom we frequently collaborate. She had called to notify me of a mistake made by my department, but at the end neglected to hang up her phone properly before commenting on my team’s lack of intelligence and other similarly unflattering remarks.

Of course I plan to follow up with her on a course of action to address her initial complaint, but should I make any mention of the end of her message? What do I say?

Assuming that I’m reading your letter correctly and her remarks at the end weren’t intended for you to hear, I’d just take it as useful background information — now you know that you have a client with real concerns about your team. That’s useful to know and can guide your response in ways other than just directly telling her that you heard that.

That said, it’s possible that — depending on the relationship with the client and the situation here — it could be useful to just address it head-on by saying something like, “At the end of your message, before you hung up, the voicemail recorded you saying X and Y. I don’t think that was meant for me to hear, but obviously I want to make sure we address what’s causing you to feel that way. Here’s my take on the situation / how I’m handling the situation / etc.”

2. Do people think thank-you’s for gifts are optional?

For two years, I supervised a graduate student employee. In May, I bought her a graduation gift for her last day. When I handed her the wrapped gift and card, she said a hollow-sounding “Aw, thanks!” and dashed out of my office without opening it. It’s been over a month at this point and I’ve received no thank-you whatsoever. I’m so annoyed about her seeming lack of appreciation and poor etiquette. Amplifying my irritation is the fact that I used my personal money to purchase the items since our office budget does not allow for gifts, and the recipient knows this since she was part of an office-wide meeting where the restrictions were mentioned. I commented about the lack of thank-you note to a younger coworker and she was nonchalant about it, saying she often forgets to send thank-yous for gifts.

Am I expecting too much? I feel like a grumpy elder complaining about “disrespectful whippersnappers”– I’m mid-30s, while she is mid-20s — but have we really gotten to a point where a thank-you note for a gift is optional?

Well, technically, etiquette has never required thank-you notes for gifts that are received in person and where the giver is thanked on the spot. The requirement is for a thank-you, not for one in writing. So your employee fulfilled the letter of the law, although not the spirit of it. Although, of course, since she didn’t actually open in front of you, she should have followed up with you and expressed more specific appreciation once she found out what the gift was.

In any case, how are this person’s social skills in general? I’d be more inclined to write it off to interpersonal awkwardness or lack of social graces from her in particular than as a sweeping sentiment about the state of thank-you’s in general. I know you’re seeing a pattern from the other coworker’s comment, but there have always been people with poor manners (etiquette columns have been answering upset letters about lack of thank-you’s for decades).

3. New badges are creating visual divides

I’m kind of confused about a new policy at work and was hoping to get some perspective. My work (a large specialty teapot maker owned by an even larger general teapot maker) informally rolled out a new badge policy with promises of a full explanation of the changes to come. The new policy is we all must wear our badges on a lanyard around our necks, which is fine, but permanent hired staff and contracted/temp staff have different lanyards. The difference is not even remotely subtle: Permanent employee badges are very plain, while the ones for contractors and temps are a very bright color. This doesn’t reflect any level of security clearance or access to certain clean teapot rooms; a contractor with an advanced PhD who has been working with us for many years will have the same visual designation as a temp here for the day to do some filing.

It’s already something of a cliquey Who You Know environment and I’m vaguely uncomfortable with this Othering of people who, in a lot of cases, have been here for many years and act as essential staff. It’s such a large organization that I can’t imagine actually pushing back on this policy, but I do wonder if my unease is legitimate.

Eh, it’s not a terribly uncommon practice. There are actually solid legal reasons for giving contractors different badges than employees; there are legal restrictions about not treating contractors like employees in a whole variety of ways.

If your company generally treats contractors and temps well, that matters more than the badges. (And of course, if they don’t, that’s the bigger issue anyway.)

4. Is it creepy to check people out on LinkedIn?

I’m an in-house lawyer for a fairly large public service organization. Part of my job is drafting/reviewing leases, permits, and other agreements with external entities and individuals. I usually don’t, however, have any personal contact with these external persons — that is handled by my colleagues. Occasionally, I feel that it’s somewhat relevant to do a quick check on a person involved in an agreement I’m working on — sometimes to help figure out exactly what legal entity they represent, and sometimes just out of curiosity.

Is it a faux pas or otherwise weird to check the LinkedIn profile of such a person? I have a LinkedIn profile that identifies the organization and my position, so they would know who was checking up on them.

The same question would apply if I were in private practice and checking up on clients (without necessarily wanting to connect to all of them) and people on the other side of deals I’m working on (including their lawyers).

I could view these profiles in “incognito” or fake person mode, but first, it’s a bit of a pain, and second, it doesn’t give you all the information that you can see when you are logged in. I’m just curious about the social norms about this.

Nope, it’s not a faux pas. LinkedIn is basically a huge public, professional rolodex and it’s fine to check someone’s affiliations or background there. I wouldn’t worry about it at all.

(If you’re checking daily or something like that, that could certainly feel creepy, but it doesn’t sound like that’s what you’re doing.)

5. Quitting while my manager is on maternity leave

I’ve been feeling for a while that it’s time to move on from my current job. The opportunities for someone in my field are pretty limited at my company, so even though I’m great at my job and consistently get good reviews and praise from my managers, I’d like to work for a company where I have a clearer path upward.

The good news is that I’m close to receiving a job offer with a company in my chosen field. The bad news is that my manager has just gone on maternity leave. If this job comes through before she returns, how should I handle telling her? Is it bad form to go while she’s on leave?

I also feel bad about the gap I’d leave in my team by walking away. We’re very all-hands-on-deck, and the others will have to pick up a lot of extra tasks while they look for a replacement. I know that this would occur no matter when I chose to leave–but doing it while the manager is also gone feels bad. If my offer does come through, should I try to negotiate a later start date to give her time to return? What can I do to keep my team from scrambling after my exit?

No reasonable manager assumes that her maternity leave binds other employees to stay in their jobs until she returns. Imagine if it did — it would mean people would have to put job searches, moves, and other normal life events on hold.

You absolutely do not need to wait until she returns from leave. You should give your resignation to whoever is filling in for her while she’s away, and then I’d also send her an email separately letting her know. (If you’re very close, you could maybe call her — but only if you’re very close and know her well enough to know that she’d want the call rather than feel aggravated by being bothered at home while she’s supposed to be disconnected from work.)

People leave jobs, and it’s rarely at a perfectly convenient time. (A perfectly convenient time usually doesn’t even exist.) Your team will make do. The best thing you can do is to leave things in as good shape as you can, with plentiful documentation (something that you can start working on now, if you haven’t already), and then move on with a clear conscience.

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.