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

1. My manager has been freezing me out since I talked to HR about her

Last May, I finished my masters and in September landed a job in my field and specialty. The first few months were great with my boss, Claire. She was super nice, let me know everything that was going on in the department, I got along with my other coworker in my department, and I finally felt like I had found my job and people. I even told Claire I had a disability that I put on my application. She was very understanding and supportive.

Then in January, things changed. Claire accused me of trying to do her job anytime I suggested something and said I needed to stick to the things I was hired to do and to stop acting like the smartest person in the room. I was pulled into HR about this time and was told Claire made an off-hand comment about my disability and I needed to fill out official paperwork so I would be legally protected. The final straw when Claire yelled at me for making a judgment call when another department needed something from us and I was the only one in our department there, and then asked what my problem was while giving a textbook description of my disability. I went to our department head, John, and told him everything. He told me he’d talk to her and that I should go to HR.

I went to HR and everything led to a hostile work environment investigation. I did not want that. The conclusion was there was no hostile work environment and my boss and I have different communication skills. However, during it, it was discovered I had made my coworker, Maddie, feel uncomfortable. No one was written up and nothing was done. Claire, John, and I were each given a different HR class to take. I had to take one about bullying in the workplace. My boss had to take one about the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Since this happened, Claire has given me the silent treatment. 95% of our communication is through email. I am no longer privy to all the happenings of our department. I find out things by accident, when I walk in on her and Maddie talking. Claire goes out of her way to be passive-aggressive and petty to me in the emails. My cubicle is right across from her office and she used to always keep her door open, but now she keeps it closed most of the time. She didn’t wish me happy birthday on my birthday, when several people in other departments brought me gifts and cards. However, Maddie’s birthday was a week later and she came in with a card for her. John gives me good feedback, as do the other departments I work with.

Is there anything I can do? I’m not exactly ready to run back to HR since this is how we got here. I didn’t expect Claire’s and my relationship to be the same. I just didn’t expect this. Jobs in my field are rare.

HR probably did have a legal responsibility to investigate after you reported Claire’s comments; once they’re aware of something like that, they’re legally obligated to take action, even if that’s not what you wanted.

But Claire is retaliating against you for talking to HR and for the subsequent investigation, and that’s illegal. Federal law makes it very clear that it’s illegal to retaliate against an employee for making a good-faith complaint of discrimination, even if the complaint were eventually found to be baseless.

I know you don’t want to go back to HR, but if you want the situation to change, that’s really the next step. You’d go back to them and explain that Claire’s behavior toward you has noticeably changed since the investigation, that you’re concerned she’s retaliating against you for making a good-faith report, and that you’re formally requesting the company’s assistance in shutting down the retaliation. If you don’t trust HR to handle this competently and think it will make things worse, this may not make sense to do; in that case, you could consider a similar conversation with John, or one with a lawyer.

(I am curious about what happened between you and Maddie that led them to send you to an anti-bullying training and whether you think there was any merit to that. The answer wouldn’t change the steps that are available now, but if there were legitimate concerns about your behavior toward Maddie, that probably puts you in a less sympathetic position, although HR would have the same obligations regardless. It would make it messier, though. And also, if HR thinks Claire didn’t create a hostile work environment and this is just different communication styles, then what’s up with them making her take a class on the ADA? It doesn’t smell right.)

2. We’re written up for being one minute late

I have worked for manufacturing companies for over 20 years, all in the office and a few of those years as mid-level management. I have a college degree, further education, and am salary. My current employer just implemented writing office staff up for being late. This is not a situation of being 10, 15, or 30 minutes late, nor of chronically being late. This is, “You were one minute late today.” Performance doesn’t matter, staying late or otherwise being early or on time doesn’t matter. Bad weather is not an excuse. Really, no excuse is allowed. And you can be terminated for a few instances in a year. None of these roles see clients in-person or are call center type jobs.

Of all the companies I have worked for, this is the second one to implement this. I left the first in part because of it and will be leaving this one. It seems bananapants to me. Is this typical for what others see in this type of company? I get that is exists for the product floor but for salaried office staff?

No, this is not typical and yes, it is bananapants. There are jobs where you really do need to be at your desk and ready to work by a specific starting time because you need to answer client calls, etc., and that can be true regardless of whether you have a degree, are salaried, and so forth. But that is not most jobs, and “writing people up” (a fairly ridiculous concept in itself) for being a minute later, regardless of context, is absurd and infantilizing.

Related:
ridiculously rigid attendance policy

3. My company can’t move past my conduct five years ago

I have been with my construction company for 14 years, during which time I have significantly expanded my skill set and reached a senior level with a strong salary. However, my history here is complicated. Five years ago, while struggling with severe alcoholism, I had a significant professional lapse that resulted in my employer giving me an ultimatum: I had to complete rehabilitation and maintain sobriety to remain employed.

I have now been sober for five years and have consistently performed as an exemplary employee. While my manager has forgiven me, it is clear that the family who owns the business has not. Despite my contributions, I am consistently passed over for public recognition and achievements, and the environment feels increasingly hostile.

I am weighing whether it is better to stay and maintain my current status and salary or if it is time to cut my losses and move to a company where I can have a fresh start. I can sense that they can barely stand the sight of me; I feel like the ultimate pariah and it is very uncomfortable. I would appreciate any guidance you could offer on whether I should stay or begin looking for new opportunities.

Yes, start looking! Without question. For whatever reason, they can’t get past what happened, and you’re better off going somewhere else where you can start fresh.

Sometimes that happens! When people get used to seeing you a certain way, sometimes it can be really hard for them to see you differently, no matter how much you demonstrate that you’re no longer that same person. Sometimes that’s a failing on their side. Sometimes it’s because the earlier breach of trust can just never really be repaired, even when everyone hopes to. Either way, you’re better making a clean start with a company that doesn’t have that history with you.

4. Employer wants us to report all outside work, not just conflicts of interest

My company likes to say they are not trying to be “Big Brother” but seem to enact policies that probe much beyond what other companies in the same industry ever do. I am very used to anti-moonlighting policies and those make sense: don’t do what we pay you to do for other people. Well, my company has a policy we’ve somewhat gotten around but they have recently been changes that makes it a bit harder. They want to know all outside work, including your hat-knitting business, working for a family business, unpaid time you may volunteer for anything that may constitute a business, how many hours per week, etc. Everyone must submit a form with “nothing to report” or report anything else and attest that they’ve covered all scenarios.

My work is in technical compliance, and I would never moonlight without explicit transparency for a number of reasons. I have a part-time side hustle in a creative realm completely unrelated to this work. There is zero overlap, and I do the side work under an alias. You could never google my name and find my side project. My boss knows the general nature of the side work, and has been fine with me not reporting it.

Many of us feel this policy is reaching too far into our personal lives and demanding information that doesn’t impact our jobs or our time at work. How should we handle this? Our company is shifting more and more toward Big Brother tracking and monitoring and it may be a mass exodus around here…

Most likely, they’re requesting it because they’re concerned that if they leave it up to each individual employee to decide what’s relevant, someone may make the wrong call and not report something that’s actually a potential conflict of interest. They’ve decided it’s safer to ask you to report it all so that they can decide if it’s a conflict or not. Depending on the type of work you do for your company, that’s not necessarily outrageous; there are jobs where that would make sense.

If you think it doesn’t make sense for your line of work, you and a group of coworkers can certainly try pushing back, explaining why you think it’s unnecessary — but all it takes to cause this kind of policy change is them having one person who decided something wasn’t relevant to report when it actually was. They may be overreaching in other areas, but this one probably isn’t worth the capital to try to fight.

Related:
interview with a conflict of interest professional

5. Companies promoting their businesses in comments on my LinkedIn posts

I post regularly on LinkedIn and have a good following in my industry. This past week, a company liked my post and added a comment, which was a promotion for their business. I’m considering deleting it because I don’t want my posts/profile used to promote other businesses. On the other hand, it reflects on them and maybe it seems quite dramatic to delete it. What are your views?

Delete it without hesitation. It’s spam! There’s nothing dramatic about deleting spam.

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

1. My coworkers’ approach to group work is driving me mad

At my workplace, we’re regularly required to give short presentations on how our work is coming along. As we work in teams, the teams need to present together. It seems like every time I come up against the same dynamic, and it’s driving me up a tree:

For example, Fergus and I need to do a 5-10 minute presentation on sales in a certain district. We have to make a PowerPoint and a summarizing document to be shared with everyone. We split up the work so that we’re each handling one half of both the PowerPoint and the document, and set up a check-in meeting a few days before the meeting to run through the presentation. Fergus completes his work just a couple of hours before the check-in, so I’m looking at the document throughout the week, seeing nothing happen, and getting freaked out that I’m going to have to pick up his work. After the first check-in, more work needs to be done on the presentation, so we schedule another check-in. Again, nothing seems to be happening ahead of the second check-in, so I break and just go in and do his work. Fergus expresses remorse at not having done his part and, to make amends, goes in and makes unnecessary changes that make the presentation worse (think randomly italicizing words or making all the text different colors), necessitating me going in again and reverting the changes because it was fine before. Altogether, doing the presentation together has taken twice the amount of time it would have taken me to do it alone, and it’s eaten into other important work I need to do. By this point, I am livid and Fergus can tell, so doing the presentation becomes clunky and joyless, even though I actually really enjoy giving presentations.

This is just one example, but it’s not specific to Fergus. Fergus is also not a bad guy, and I don’t think he’s deliberately trying to get a free ride. What I’ve shared above is a pretty specific example — not every person is formatting materials like this! However, the dynamic of me picking up other people’s work when it’s not done on time or correctly has happened with so many different people that I’m beginning to think it’s a me problem. It’s probably unreasonable to ask people to get their work done ahead of time so that I’m not stressed about it. And I know that there are certain aspects that I can just let go. It’s just that when a person seems to be on their way to giving me the runaround, I automatically get in that headspace of, “Here we go again! I might as well do the whole thing myself since that’s what’s going to happen anyway!” And then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Can you offer some reframing so that I don’t lose my ever-loving mind? Are there some scripts I can use to make sure my coworkers and I are on the same page in terms of expectations?

First, how much does it matter if these presentations are perfect? Are you correcting them to a standard used by other people presenting or to a higher one? If the latter, it’s worth revisiting if it would actually be fine to put less energy into perfecting these.

Or, can you divide the work differently — like instead of each being responsible for half the PowerPoint and half the document, can you each take the entirety of one? (Probably not if you’re presenting jointly, but it’s worth asking.)

And if you’re nervous when you don’t see work being done earlier because you know from past history that it means changes will be needed at the last minute, why not suggest checking in earlier in the process?

But also, you need to stop looking at your partners’ work until the actual check-in, because that’s just making you antsy and adding to the problem — and the deadline needs to be the real deadline (without a secret deadline earlier in the week). And you definitely need to stop going in and doing your coworkers’ work for them just because it’s not done early; that’s not fair to them (they may have time carved out to do it later and it’s not okay for you to just decide to do it yourself) and it’s compounding the problem.

If you find that trying all of this leaves you with substandard work, then it’s time to talk to your boss about what’s going wrong — but first do the above and see where that gets you.

2. Giving feedback to a staff member when I haven’t seen the problem myself

I work in a structure with four managers and four officers, where the direct reporting lines don’t really correspond to working areas. So as a manager, I have regular and comprehensive catch-ups with my reporting officer (Lily), but I don’t actually get to see what she’s like to work with, only what she tells me. And I see enough to have given her some development pointers over the last year, but we don’t have any formal 360 review type mechanisms in place.

One of my fellow managers has told me that she and the officer she manages have both found Lily isn’t great at collaborating — she can guard projects a little too closely. I’d love to work with her on developing this skill, but I don’t want it to sound like people are coming to me unprompted complaining about her. I don’t think this is a failing, just an area of working where someone relatively junior and inexperienced can stand to improve. Can you suggest any scripts for how to bring this up?

Be transparent: “I periodically talk to other managers and offices about how things are going and where we can develop, and one things I’ve heard is that they’d like better collaboration on things like X and Y. When you’re the owner of a project, sometimes it can be easy to guard it so closely that other people feel shut out from opportunities to engage on it — but we want them to have chances to hear about progress, give input, and spot problems that they’re especially well positioned to spot (and which we may not be). Can we talk about how you’re handling input from others — and where we should welcome it, and what to do when you’re not sure a particular piece of feedback makes sense for the work?”

Before you do this, though, go back to the other manager and get more information about exactly how this is playing out (if you don’t already have those specifics ). You want to know exactly where Lily is struggling with this since your guidance will differ depending on what that looks like. For example, your focus would be different if she’s getting defensive when people offer input versus never giving them chances to offer it in the first place, and so forth).

Alternately, in some cases you could just ask, “What are you doing to ensure we get input from the X and Y teams?” or “What kind of input has Jane offered on this?” (and then, “What was your thinking on that?”) and dig into it that way, or even sit in on a couple of relevant meetings where you could observe it firsthand and then give her feedback afterwards. But this isn’t something you should need to dance around.

3. Can you use a follow-up email to “fix” responses you messed up in the interview?

Can post-interview thank-you email be used for other purposes — namely, is it an opportunity to shore up responses where I know I didn’t nail it in the interview?

I tend to either nail or whiff my interview questions entirely based on whether I anticipated and prepped for the questions in advance, so inevitably I have at least one or two questions where I fail to answer them well. Can I use the thank you email to share some of what I wish I’d said on reflection?

I’m imagining something like this: first, thanking them as normal. Then, if the question I whiffed was about X, I’d say, “As someone who does X in my work — such as with Example A, B, and C — I continue to be excited about the opportunity to leverage these skills in service of….”

And if you whiffed more than one question, can you address multiple things? I think trying to recover from more than two issues would make the email way too long, but wondering if “thank you, highlight area X, highlight area Y” is also crossing that line.

Yes, you can use your follow-up email to correct or expand on things that came up in the interview, including things you don’t think you answered well. But your proposed example is too subtle! You should be more direct about it. For example: “I realized that when you asked about X, I should have shared ____.” Keep this relatively short — a paragraph or two at most.

And I’d limit it to just one or two things. The second can be framed as, “I also wanted to mention…”

More than that will come across a little weirdly, but it’s fine to do this with one or two topics.

Related:
thank-you notes: they’re not about thanking anyone

4. Explaining minor injuries at work

I’ve recently developed a minor skin condition on my hands. It’s easily treatable and not something I think about or worry about too much. However, the medicated lotion makes the skin on my hands incredibly thin, so they’re covered with scars and scrapes constantly. This in and of itself isn’t even that bad, but even a minor scratch or bump causes me to start bleeding. This morning I was running to a meeting, sat down, and realized I had blood running down my hand where I must have bumped it getting out of the car.

How do I address it so my coworkers aren’t worried? I don’t really need help or anything. I keep bandages everywhere and I usually just excuse myself for a moment, clean off the blood and come back. I’ve even started bleeding in a meeting after I hit my hand on the table! But to reiterate, these aren’t things that really hurt at all and I don’t want people to be concerned, but I appreciate that they are.

Keep doing what you’re doing — excuse yourself to handle it and then come back. You don’t need to say anything beyond that. But if someone expresses concern, just say, “Oh, it’s just a minor skin condition that means I bleed easily right now, but nothing to worry about.” People will take their cues from you, so if you’re breezy about it, that’ll likely be that.

5. When I’m a witness for someone else’s complaint, can I share my own experience?

My coworker, Vila, has raised an official grievance against his manager, Servalan, for bullying and discrimination. I’ve been asked to be a witness in the investigation, and I’m not sure what to expect in the meeting or what my responsibilities are.

I haven’t directly seen Servalan’s behavior in this case because Vila is in a different office but, based on how she treated me for the four months I reported to her, I absolutely believe it. The only reason I didn’t raise a grievance myself is because I spoke to my skip-level boss and had my reporting line changed. Can I talk about Servalan’s treatment of me in the meeting, or am I expected to keep solely to how she treated Vila?

Yes, you can share your own experience with Servalan. Be up-front about that: “I haven’t directly seen Servalan’s behavior with Vila because I’m in a different office, but I have my own firsthand experience with her that aligns with what Vila is reporting. Would you like me to share what I experienced myself?”