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“my boss is super excited about The Voice, coworkers are late with edits every week, and more” plus 3 more Ask a Manager

“my boss is super excited about The Voice, coworkers are late with edits every week, and more” plus 3 more Ask a Manager


my boss is super excited about The Voice, coworkers are late with edits every week, and more

Posted: 23 Apr 2018 09:03 PM PDT

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

1. My boss is super excited that a coworker's sibling is on The Voice

I have a coworker whose sibling is on The Voice. Their boss has been sending out emails about voting and supporting the contestant through to the next round. I like this coworker a lot, but the emails are kind of grating. I have a lot of causes I’d love to get our staff’s support on, but don’t think it’s appropriate to make the ask. I also see that it’s a big deal, and they’re excited about (rightly so!). But it’s also a slippery slope to constant asks from folks all over about all kinds of things.

In sum, I can see how you could argue this both ways. Which way would you argue this?

The boss may see this as a thing for you all to bond around, create camaraderie, etc. There would be a stronger argument for that if it was your coworker herself who was on the show; it gets a lot more tenuous when it's her sibling. Still, though, in some offices, this could be a fun thing that people legitimately get into. And it's unusual enough (in terms of the difficulty in getting on the show, and how high-profile it is) that I think your boss could reasonably feel like this isn't opening the door to a cascade of more mundane requests. So I don't think it's outrageous that your boss is making it into such a thing (assuming, of course, that she's not sending multiple emails a day about it).

That said, it’s potentially setting people up to feel like their own achievements aren't given the same recognition as the achievements of someone who doesn't even work there, and that's something your boss will need to be sensitive to.

2. My colleagues are late every week with edits to my work

As an executive assistant to the director of my division, I am responsible each week for a report on our major contracts. I gather information from various managers, consolidate their updates onto one document, and edit the updates so that the verbiage is clear and consistent. This report takes most of the week because there are always questions that my boss wants answered, as well as a lot of editing required on my part. Each Thursday I send the final draft to everyone and request initial edits by 1 p.m. on Friday. I NEVER get responses on time. They eventually turn them in, but it's usually an hour or more past deadline. These edits really consist of a few sentences per contract and no more.

I ave tried to talk with management, to be a pest, and to move the deadline back and no matter what it’s turned in late. Please advise if you have a strategy for dealing with this. I have no authority over these people other than as the representative of my boss, and that clearly holds little weight.

They might actually need more time. Even though their edits are only a few sentences, they presumably have to read the whole thing and might need to chase down answers from their own staff, and they may have work that's legitimately a higher priority that day.

If they're getting their edits to you just an hour past the deadline, you might just need to mentally adjust the deadline in your head and think of it as being 2:00 rather than 1:00, if your own workflow will allow for that. If it won't, then you could try sending their sections to them earlier if possible (if you're able to send their piece of it before the entire document is ready), or talking to them to explain why you need it on time and what the impact is if you don't get it (preferably an impact that it'll be clear matters to your director rather than just to you, since they're more likely to prioritize that). If that doesn't work, you might need to talk to your boss about the timeline being too tight for people to turn around their edits in time. She might actually agree that they're right to be prioritizing other things, or she might decide to use her authority to push them to prioritize this — but at that point, where you'll have exhausted everything you can do on your own, that should be her call to make.

3. Companies that try to be hip in their marketing

This isn’t a question about my job per se, but something I nonetheless wonder about. The credit union I bank at accidentally sent a mass email to the wrong people. They sent out a correction email. Both emails were oddly familiar in tone and trying to be hip. For example, the second email said, "The thing is, we realized after it went out that we sent some to the wrong folks. Awkward :( ” and “Now you get a second email to explain you shouldn’t have necessarily gotten the first one. More Awkward, yes, but we also don’t want you to panic…” Trust me, I wasn’t going to panic!

What is the general consensus about emails written in this tone? It gets the information across, but to be honest, I like my financial institutions to be a bit more serious in their correspondence. Maybe I’m just a curmudgeon? Is this a thing we’ll see more of as companies try to connect with so-called millennials?

There has indeed been a shift in the last decade or so (maybe longer?) to companies increasingly trying to sound hip … but yeah, it often results in them just sounding contrived because there's so clearly a marketing team behind it. Consumers are fairly savvy about marketing these days and I'd think would be at least mildly turned off by this kind of pandering language, so I'm curious if there's any evidence that it works. I agree I wouldn't want it from my bank either, although maybe we're both curmudgeons. But it's definitely a thing.

4. Have I been mispronouncing a volunteer's name for years?

I have a teen volunteer who I have been supervising for three years though she has been volunteering with my organization since before I started. A (notably unreliable) former coworker introduced her to me as Tamara (pronounced TAM-er-ah) and that’s how I’ve been referring to her. I’ve even written letters of recommendation for her. Recently, the other (much more reliable) folks who used to work with her have asked if Tam-AH- rah is still volunteering. Now I’m concerned I’ve been calling her the wrong name for years and she’s too quiet and polite to correct me. Is it too late to ask the correct way to pronounce her name?

It is not too late! You can just say, "I've noticed some folks calling you Tam-AH-rah recently. Is that the correct way to say your name?" If she says yes, you can just give her a quick apology and tell you didn't realize that but will correct it.

5. I want to be a reference for a friend who's struggled with sobriety but I don't think I should

I have a friend and former coworker who has a long history with substance abuse, but when we met he was clean and sober for years. He was very open about his past with me and with others, it was never a secret. He was great to work with and extremely competent. A few years later, my (still sober) coworker and I crossed paths again at another company, but at different locations. Things went well for a while, and then my friend ghosted. When a manager tried to check on him, he was verbally abusive and threatened to call the police. This isn’t like my friend at all. It turns out he had started using again, and has struggled with maintaining sobriety since (by his admission, I’m not assuming this).

I’ve never actually been called, but I’ve agreed to be a reference in the past, and I have nothing but positive things to say about my direct experience working with my friend. I’d love to stay an unburnt bridge in the future, because I know he’s going to need one. However, it feels unethical to only discuss our first job together when I saw things blow up with the other employer in a way that could realistically happen again. It would be easy for a reference checker to see we were there at the same time, and if asked directly I wouldn’t lie. I’m not emotionally capable of being a constant in his life when he’s using, so I can’t speak to his sobriety in real time, and wouldn’t try to anyway. I feel like this is the one thing I can do to help him get back on his feet when he’s ready, and I feel guilty acknowledging that it’s not in my best interests to vouch for him anymore. I’m probably naive, but I do think he’s a good person and have seen him be a capable, even excellent, employee for an extended period. Do I have to completely write off my friend professionally?

No, but I do think you have to be honest, which means giving the full version of what you know, not just the positive piece of it. So if you give a reference, you could talk in detail about the good work you saw him do when you worked together, but you'd also need to mention that you know he's had trouble more recently. You shouldn't use your own professional capital to cover for someone because it could end up harming your own reputation … plus, if you agree to weigh in on someone's work, you have an ethical obligation not to leave out something so highly relevant.

You could, however, give him a heads-up ahead of time, so that he'd have a chance to decide whether nor not to offer you as a reference at all.

my boss is super excited about The Voice, coworkers are late with edits every week, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

my coworker abuses our office IM program

Posted: 23 Apr 2018 10:59 AM PDT

A reader writes:

I have a problem that is a minor thing in the grand scheme of things, but it is really starting to get on my nerves.

My office uses an instant messaging system, in addition to email, to communicate since 95% of the team works from home. It’s a pretty standard system with various "status” buttons we can use to indicate our availability.

Most coworkers seem to actually pay attention to what the status indicators mean, but Bran just doesn't get it. He'll IM no matter what that status says. The worst are the IMs when I have deliberately set my status to "away." Urgent or time sensitive matters I can understand, but the IMs are never about anything like that. Most are vaguely about a mutual project, but not one where I have significant input. They all start with the dreaded "Hi Arya.”

This is really starting to aggravate me. I'll be enjoying my lunch (status: AWAY) and those darn IM chimes will go off (Bran, of course) and will put me in a foul mood the rest of the day. Very harsh words have been directed toward those chimes…

Of course, there is no email explaining the contact, like most coworkers would do next, after seeing the away status. Just the "Hi Arya."

I have tried to respond to these notes with "what's up?" to little or no response.

I have escalated to: "I was away, water dance practice, what did you need?" and "sorry, I set my status to away to avoid interruptions. Sansa needs the list completed today."

I have flatly told this coworker that I prefer emails for non-urgent issues so I can maintain focus on my current tasks.

Nothing stops them.

What else can I do?

In Bran's defense, he may be IM'ing you when you're set to "away" because he just figures you'll see it at whatever point you're back. He probably thinks "away" is intended as helpful info for him (so that he knows not to expect an immediate response) rather than meaning "don't contact me right now."

If it's driving you mad, one option is to sign out of IM when you're eating at your desk or otherwise don't want to be bothered by chiming IMs. Or you could change it to something like "on deadline; please email" if that would fly in your office culture.

Beyond that, though, I'd say to be more direct, and then starting ignoring him.

You've told Bran that you prefer email for non-urgent email, but that's not actually as direct as saying, "Please don't IM me unless it's urgent." So say that.

Then, if he continues to do it anyway, ignore the IMs since they don't sound particularly urgent. Or, if you can't ignore him entirely, you can always respond a few hours later when it's convenient, and say something like "What's up?" or "I'm only seeing this now — it's better to email me."

I think this is annoying you so much because it feels like Bran is demanding immediate attention. But while it’s true that the medium is designed for instant communication, that doesn't mean that you have to use it that way. Instead, look at it the same way you look at email, at least where he's concerned.

However, you’ll probably never be able to stop the annoying "Hi Arya" messages — those are pretty common and some people find them annoying and others don't, and they're just part of working in an office that uses IM.

my coworker abuses our office IM program was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

I don’t want to spend a week in a remote cabin with coworkers while I’m pregnant

Posted: 23 Apr 2018 09:30 AM PDT

A reader writes:

We’re working on a product redesign and as part of the process, it’s been suggested that the team goes offsite for a week to bang out the details. The entire (co-ed) team is supposed to stay in a remote cabin in the mountains, retreat style, where we have to share bedrooms, bathrooms, and close quarters as we’d be living, eating, and working in said cabin for the full week.

I hate this. For several reasons, but most of all right now, I hate it because I’m pregnant. No one wants to share a bedroom with me right now with the amount of times I get up in the middle of the night to pee (TMI, sorry) and also, I don’t want to be out in some remote location far away from a hospital in case anything should happen with the pregnancy.

Our other option is to go to a resort, with individual rooms where we would sleep, modern amenities, and meeting rooms for our working sessions as opposed to working in the living room of some cabin.

Everyone seems to like the cabin idea better except me and one other person. I have mentioned my preferences, but everyone is plowing forward with this cabin idea and I’m stressed.

Any thoughts on how to swing the vote in the other direction without being the annoying pregnant person? Am I the only one who things this cabin thing is a bad idea?

I answer this question over at Inc. today, where I'm revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here.

I don’t want to spend a week in a remote cabin with coworkers while I’m pregnant was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

I don’t want to have a boss

Posted: 23 Apr 2018 07:59 AM PDT

This was originally published in August 2012.

A reader writes:

How can I stand being employed by someone when I don’t want to have a boss? I’ve always had trouble working for authority; my experience with authority, and this isn’t just a perception as I’ve tried changing that too, is they walk all over me, getting what they want, leaving pennies in the end.

You can skip the rest if you’d like, but it provides more insight into why I have trouble with having a boss.

As most things, it does start as a child. I’ve seen too much indifference; in school, it was bullies getting away with things and me the one punished.

In work, it’s bosses allowing other employees to do less work and still earn more. This may sound arrogant, but at my previous job I knew more about IT (that’s my field) than the system admin did; this in turn had me teaching him, and yet, he was earning far more than me. Eventually, that job turned into three jobs (development, graphic design, and marketing).

My previous employer asked me to help with a lot of things, not just writing software. I ended up taking work away from an outsourced graphic design agency, saving the company money, and getting a meager raise that didn’t change along with the workload. I found out too much, and discovered the company was being held on retainer for more than 3x the amount of my yearly salary, which didn’t include the costs for the projects they did have.

People asked me at that job, “How can you stand it?” I guess I should have left sooner. I was even told by my managers that they could replace me with someone else. My personal problem was how I handled frustration, but how can I hand frustration when the owner of the company literally (yes, literally) sat behind me for 3-5 hours of the day, telling me how to move my hands on the screen. I eventually left because I’m tired of doing work that I don’t want to do anymore, and I feel terrible that I’m not getting anywhere in my life.

The truth is, I feel great writing fiction and non-fiction. I wouldn’t mind doing stand up comedy, but I don’t have any experience performing in front of others — I was the kid who pulled the curtain during the school play. I did manage to write and self-publish a fiction novel, with humor, and I might publish a book under a pseudonym that I’d use as a stage name, too.

Yeah, this is a lot; it’s why I shoved it down here and away from the point. I apologize if it comes across as annoying, or someone who’s ticked off. I am, a bit. I’ve quit every job I’ve had over the same reason: I severely disagree with management, burn myself out, and can’t even get a single break to say, hey, let me get things organized.

I don’t have a job at the moment, and inside, I really don’t want one. I’m tired of listening to people talking down to me like I’m garbage. I mean, if your own employer has the gall to talk about prospective employee’s pay (exactly dollar amount), with someone who has no business knowing, wouldn’t you feel terrible? That was the last I needed to hear from them, and the rest fell into my mind, and I had to leave.

Now, I’m not lazy. If I were, I wouldn’t be seeking help in any form or another. I’m just tired of it, and it makes me irritated when I think that I less than a month’s worth of money left, and I can’t stand the thought of getting a job.

Well, no one is going to force you to get a job. It’s a choice that you make if you want the things that come with it — a steady stream of income, primarily.

If you decide you’re willing to forego the steady stream of income, there are other options. You can start your own business (which is categorically not for everyone, but an option for some). You can find some other way to pay your bills, like marrying someone who’s willing to support you. Or you can have no money at all and rely on the taxpayer-funded social safety net, which means a very low standard of living, obviously.

So you need to decide which of these options is most appealing to you — or, probably more realistically, least unappealing. What’s your bottom line — are you willing to deal with a job and boss you might not love in order to have a paycheck? And can you see them them as a direct trade of one for the other?

Most people decide they’re willing to get a job and have a boss, even if it doesn’t make them especially happy, because they want what comes with it. And in fact, for most people, work is not a source of pleasure and fulfillment. It’s a source of income. We often talk here as if it must be the former, but that’s a very privileged viewpoint that we’re lucky to be able to have. Many, many people work solely as a means of putting food on the table.

I think you need to get clarity around exactly what your choices are and what trade-offs you’re willing to make in order to have a home or disposable income or whatever it is that you want in life. Everyone makes these calculations a little differently; what’s essential is simply that you make them.

Additionally, do some thinking about your own role in your experiences so far. When someone has never had a job or a manager that they’ve been satisfied with — to the point that they’re considering not working at all as a result! — there’s often something going on with them, whether it’s an inability to be satisfied, or a problem with authority, or an anger problem, or difficulty getting along with others, or something else entirely. (And frankly, some of your examples in your letter sounded … well, a little naive. For instance, yes, companies charge clients more for your work than they pay you. Sometimes a lot more. If you don’t like it, you have the option of trying to go into business for yourself. So I do wonder if you have unrealistic expectations, at least in some respects.)

There’s also this, although I don’t know how to say it diplomatically:  People who are really good at what they do generally build up options over time. If you’re good enough, you can pick and choose so that you end up in better workplaces with better managers. You can leave bad situations, and you can often avoid them in the first place. After a certain point in a career, if you’re really good at what you do, you shouldn’t need to consider sweatshops where your boss treats you poorly. So it’s worth looking at your own work to try to figure out why you’ve haven’t worked your way out of this spot. It could be that you’re in the wrong field for your strengths, or it could be that you under-value yourself and so never try for something better, or it could be something else — I don’t know. But you should try to figure it out.

(Please know that I’m not trying to imply that you’re some sort of incompetent buffoon who is incapable of earning better treatment — I’m not. But something’s going on here that would be useful to examine.)

In any case, as is true of so many problems, this comes down to being ruthlessly realistic about what your options are. For instance, most people can’t make a living off of writing fiction or doing stand-up comedy (even the very few who do generally work a day job for years while they get their careers to the point that they’re self-funding), but maybe you’ll decide you’re willing to deal with having a boss for eight hours a day and know that your fulfillment will come from writing on the side. Or maybe you’ll decide that you’ll forego a steady paycheck, do odd jobs, and drastically lower your standard of living. There are a bunch of different combination of options, all with their own consequences.

The key is to take a brutally honest look at what’s important to you and what’s not, and what trade-offs you’re willing to live with, understanding that each choice means not choosing something else … whether it’s money, security, a boss, absolute autonomy, or something else entirely.

I don’t want to have a boss was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

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