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

1. Should my boss message me before calling on Teams?

My boss recently called me very early in the morning (7:50 am) through Teams without notice. I was working already; I got online at 7 (my work hours are 7 am – 4 pm) but it bothered me and got me a little anxious. I let it go as a missed call and wrote to her immediately after saying that I was ready now. Was that okay or is it okay for her to call without messaging me first to ask if I’m available? Or just because she’s the boss is accepted?

The fact that was so early caught me by surprise, because she’s usually online later, but I think it would have bothered me regardless of the time because she didn’t message me first.

Many offices have a cultural expectation that people will message first to check if you’re available before calling, but even then there are still times where your boss may need to just call you and won’t message first. If it’s during your work hours, that’s not an overstep. The assumption isn’t necessarily that you’ll be available on the spot (you might be on another call or away from your desk), but it’s not wrong or inappropriate for her to call without warning. (That would also be true if she were a peer, not your boss, but your boss in particular has the leeway to do it.)

2. How to accommodate people who have outbursts for medical reasons

I’m asking a question on behalf of my community of autistic folks. Some people with autism experience violent panic attacks when exhausted or profoundly overstimulated. Within the autism community, these attacks are called “meltdowns.” Most people with relatively mild autism don’t suffer from these attacks to a debilitating extent, but some autistic people, especially those who are more profoundly impacted by their autism, do. These attacks are involuntary and often cannot be controlled. Sometimes they can sometimes be lessened or managed with therapy or medication, but not always.

Because these attacks are violent and potentially dangerous, and because there is so much misunderstanding around them, people who experience regular meltdowns are frequently unable to work, even if they are otherwise highly qualified. Autism community boards often feature posts by people with meltdowns trying to figure out how to make a living in spite of these attacks.

What advice would you give people in this situation? Is it legitimate to ask for accommodations to deal with these attacks–perhaps remote work, or off-hours/night work? Are there any other accommodations that might be possible? Is there anything else to suggest?

It’s absolutely legitimate to ask for accommodations, and remote work sounds like it could be one of them if it’s feasible for the job. Also, if a person’s meltdowns are likely to be triggered by something in the work environment, an effective accommodation could be minimizing or removing that trigger (for example, if a noisy environment or disruption to routine can cause them, you could look at accommodations geared toward avoiding those triggers — like a quieter workspace or at least a more sensory-friendly space you can move to when needed, the understanding that you sometimes may simply need to get up and leave, or advance notice when there will be changes to a routine).

Not every accommodation will be possible for every job, but an employer should be willing to enter into the ADA-mandated interactive process to try to find a solution, and there are lots of options between the extremes of “coworkers are exposed to violent outbursts” and “otherwise qualified person who has autistic meltdowns just can’t work.”

3. Mentioning in an interview that a good friend works on the team

My partner was invited to an interview for a supervisory position in their field with a new organization where a mutual friend of ours also works. As it happens, we both know this friend from a previous job all three of us worked at about eight years ago. The role would make my partner and friend co-supervisors to a shared pool of employees, which actually kind of mirrors the job situation we were in all those years ago (it’s a small industry!).

Should my partner disclose the friendship to the hiring committee? On one hand, this doesn’t seem like it raises any conflict of interest issues, it’s just a job where they’d be working with a good friend. On the other hand, would a hiring committee think it weird if they don’t mention it at all, and it comes out on the first day of work that two of the supervisors are good friends and have known each other all along?

To be clear, we haven’t sought out our friend’s advice on how to prepare for the interview, or asked anything of them to help my partner out in any way, so we’re wondering what you would recommend as the safest choice in this situation.

It should really come from the friend — because it would be pretty weird if your partner’s friend knows their good friend is interviewing for a job where they would be co-managers and doesn’t mention that to anyone else involved in the hiring. The hiring committee deserves the opportunity to be aware of the dynamic and think about how it might impact things, and if the friend has any input into the hiring decision, it would be a problem not to acknowledge a personal relationship with one of the candidates.

So it’s primarily the friend who should be doing this. But your partner should also find an opportunity to mention in the interview that they worked closely in a similar role with Valentina Warbleworth eight years ago.

4. I work different hours than my boss

My job doesn’t pay very well for my skills. It is sales and I have good results, but my company doesn’t make enough money to pay me accordingly. I put in an honest effort, and try to limit my time at work to what is reasonable given my salary. As a result, I leave work to work out earlier than others.

I arrive around 8-8:30 and leave around 3:30-4. I probably work a little less than others, though am typically the first in the office and I don’t know when others leave.

I have a new manager, and he comes to the office 1 to 1.5 hours later than I do. This results in me leaving way earlier than he presumably does. I’ve been honest about my salary and time approach (I actually have discussed with my former and new bosses that I don’t think I should be working full-time given my pay, and they didn’t object), but I don’t want to look like I leave ludicrously early.

How can I get credit for the time and effort I put in earlier in the day? Or should I just get a new job that I can feel good about putting more effort into? I generally like what I do, and less working out isn’t an option.

People work different schedules, so the fact that you’re in earlier and leaving earlier than others shouldn’t be an issue as long as your boss is fine with your hours. If you’re working less overall, that could be an issue, but it sounds like you’ve been straightforward with your boss about your schedule and the reasons for it and he hasn’t objected.

You can certainly make a point of ensuring he knows you’re there at 8-8:30 even if he’s not — like by sending timestamped messages around 8 and so forth. But it sounds like you have reasons for what you’re doing, you’ve laid them out, and you can continue on with it until and unless he expresses concern. (Of course, it’s possible that he doesn’t like it and just hasn’t told you — and that you won’t find out until you’re suddenly on a layoff list or something like that — but you could also ask him directly if he foresees your schedule being an issue or not.)

Whether you should get a different job is a whole different question but, based on what you’ve said, it doesn’t sound like this schedule would need to be a reason to.

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

1. How do I change a company’s culture as the owner’s son?

My father owns a production company with roughly 200 employees, multiple factories, and a strong international client base. We are based in a country with limited workers’ rights, but are trying to adopt American labor standards to attract higher-profile clients. I work here part-time with largely undefined responsibilities, but usually end up handling emails, editing product photos, interviewing potential interns, and arranging internal events. My position alone raises red flags, as I make more than my work would merit any other employee.

My father has asked for my perspective regarding the company’s growth and sustainability, and while I have a few ideas, I just don’t know where to start! We don’t have an HR division, our core staff’s responsibilities keep expanding, our prices are falling short of competitive, and boundaries are blurred relatively often. When I was a child, company truckers would pick me up from school on my father’s behalf, and no one seems to think it’s weird that employees are tasked with washing his car or photocopying his children’s medical documents. Even if it’s normalized in the local culture, something tells me a greater separation between work life and personal life would do wonders.

I would appreciate some pointers on what to focus on first. Do I tell my father to talk to a consultant? Do I convince him to hire trained HR personnel? Do I document all the cases of blurred boundaries and tell him companies in the U.S. would never let them happen? I don’t intend on working here for much longer, but I care about this company. I just don’t know what I can do when I majored in something other than business and am just working here until I get admitted to a postgraduate program.

I don’t think you’re well-positioned to change such fundamental things about the company’s culture, so you should take the pressure off yourself to somehow find a way to! You can certainly point out the things you’ve described here, but unless your father really has a quite deep respect for your opinion on this stuff, I’m skeptical it’s going to make much of a difference. There’s also a really wide range of issues here: boundaries, job descriptions, workloads, pricing … those are all each their own areas and there’s no one person equipped to fix all of them unless they’re very high-level in the company and your father places a huge amount of trust in them (and even then I’d expect an uphill battle). You could suggest he bring in outside consultants and/or hire someone to work on professionalizing their operations, but I wouldn’t expect to be able to fix this stuff from where you’re standing.

That said, you didn’t actually write that your dad is asking you to fix this stuff; he just asked for your perspective. Go ahead and share your perspective on as much of this as you’d like! If your sense is that he’ll be more responsive to some pieces than others, focus on those. But know that even an experienced consultant coming in wouldn’t be able to fix these things without significant buy-in and commitment from your dad.

2. Are some employees just not motivated by anything?

My company is a small design agency. For the last 10+ years, I’ve managed Jim. He’s quiet and does okay work most of the time — nothing stellar or particularly creative. I’ve coached him to get out of his comfort zone, showed examples of what I (and our clients) are looking for, and things improve for a hot minute before he reverts right back to uninspired work.

What stumps me is that nothing seems to excite him or motivate him to grow or progress in his career. I’ve talked to him many times about what I’d like to see in terms of progress in the quality of his work, offered him professional development opportunities, asked what kinds of assignments he most enjoys so I could steer them his way, and included him in client meetings so he could be involved in some projects right from the start. None of that has made any difference in his level of engagement or work quality.

He frequently overlooks tasks he’s solely responsible for (like scheduling our social media posts) and just apologizes when asked why something wasn’t done. Annual reviews seem like we’re having the exact same conversation every year. He hasn’t qualified for a raise in the last four year and has never asked why or what he could do better. Is it possible that some employees simply aren’t motivated by anything?

Yes. It’s also possible he just doesn’t have the skills or aptitude for what you need — or the interest in putting in the work on an ongoing basis (since he does occasionally improve for a short time but doesn’t sustain it). You say he does okay most of the time, but it doesn’t really sound like it if he’s not producing what clients want and regularly misses tasks he’s in charge of.

If I’m wrong about that and his work is truly fine and the issue is only that he’s not improving over time — but his current level of skill is perfectly acceptable for the job and will remain perfectly acceptable even if he never grows — then your best move is to accept that this is Jim and he’s probably not going to change, and he doesn’t need to be constantly improving if his base level is acceptable. But what you described sounds more like someone who isn’t well-suited for the job he’s in — a performance problem, not a motivation problem — and at this point I’d move to what you want to do about that. Personally, I’d want to replace him with someone who’s better at the work.

Related:
how do I motivate someone who doesn’t bother to do his work

3. Can I ask for a demotion out of management?

I’ve worked for the same large institution for about 16 years. A few years ago, I made a move from one closely-related department to another to take on a junior managerial role. I’m proud of a lot of the work I’ve done here, but it hasn’t been easy, and after several years of managing, training new staff, designing new procedures, being the point person for questions, and collaborating with my boss, I am so deeply burned out on management. I want out. The only parts of the work that I still find enjoyable are the bits where I’m basically doing the same tasks as all the other team members (I have the same daily and weekly rotational tasks that they have, plus my management responsibilities). The management parts just feel draining. It probably doesn’t help that I have chronic health conditions that have negatively impacted my work in the past and have the potential to do so again.

I found out recently that one of our team members is leaving, and I caught myself daydreaming about what it would be like if I could be gloriously demoted to that job (an independent contributor role) instead — no more exempt status that only ever benefits my employer and never me, no more giving negative feedback and coaching, no more being solely responsible for all training and logistics…

If it would even be possible, it would mean a pay cut, but I could make do with that. What I’m not sure is how I would explain the desire to take that step down. How do you say “Give me less responsibility and money, please”? And how would I explain that change on my resume when applying for other roles in the future? I don’t want to leave because I’m awful at my job, I want to leave because the job is eating my life and I’m miserable. I want to go back to a nice non-exempt role with clearly delineated boundaries.

Even if it’s not this role, I badly want to move to something that’s not management, and it will likely involve a step down the hierarchy and possibly a pay cut. How do I explain to prospective managers that my interest in these kinds of roles is serious and that I genuinely want to make that move out of management?

This is a thing people do! Anyone with any amount of thoughtfulness who has managed people knows it’s not easy and should be able to imagine just not wanting to do it anymore. As long as you make it clear you’re not expecting to stay at a management-level pay rate, this is a reasonable thing to raise.

Say this to your boss: “I’m interested in being considered for Jane’s role when she leaves. I’d really like to return to being an independent contributor; I understand it would mean a pay cut. Is that something we could talk about?”

For applying for non-management jobs outside your company, you can be open about targeting non-management roles specifically (as opposed to just being willing to take one if that’s all that’s available): “I’m looking for an independent contributor role where I can focus on XYZ” / “I’ve realized what what I most enjoy is XYZ and am deliberately seeking roles that don’t include management” / “I worked as a manager for the last two years, which helped me realize that what I really want to focus on is XYZ — management took me away from that, and I’m excited to get back to it.”

Related:
how to explain why I want a lower-level, lower-responsibility job

4. Rejecting applicants who don’t include a cover letter

I used to manage the recruiting process here at my small (12 people) social housing organization, but luckily we now have a staff member who is half finance and half HR (and she actually has gone to school for HR, unlike me). I’m very happy to be out of the HR tasks, since I’ve never had any HR education; it was just a gap that I helped fill.

We currently have two positions we are recruiting for, both at the level where we ask for a resume and cover letter. Many applicants don’t include a cover letter and they are usually sent right to the “no” file. What are your thoughts on an email as cover letter? Most of the applications come into our general email, which I manage – though I gave access to the HR staff member so, during the recruiting process, she can grab all the applications – so I see many of them. When an applicant types a short “intro” or note in their email, and only attaches a resume, should she count that email as the cover letter?

Any thoughts on her practice of not considering applicants who don’t follow the instructions in the posting to include a cover letter?

If it’s something like “I’m applying for the llama wrangler position; attached please find my resume,” that’s not a cover letter. If it’s at least a few paragraphs with actual substance in them, that’s a cover letter even though it’s just in the body of an email. Cover letters don’t need to be a separate attachment; it’s about length and substance, not where the words are.

And I’m in favor of your coworker’s practice of not considering applicants who don’t include a cover letter when they were specifically told that’s part of your application process, doubly so if the job involves any form of written communication skills. (That said, if you’re accepting applications through sites that make it difficult to include a personalized cover letter, you should factor that in. In those cases, you might respond to otherwise strong looking candidates and ask them to complete their application by submitting one.)

5. Dealing with tremors in an interview

I will have my first in-person job interview since 2019 soon. I have been remote since 2022. In the intervening years, I have developed a visible, left-dominant tremor down my arm, into my hand when I am walking or sitting. It also appears in my jaw at times. This either (1) leads my jaw to chatter or (2) leads me to clamp my jaw shut, which does not look too friendly. These can look like anxiety even when they are not and are constants regardless of emotion, but worsen during high stakes settings. I can hide them well on Zoom, but less so in-person. It takes a great deal of effort to keep them hidden, and when I get distracted they pop out.

My interview will be with a team very familiar with my work but less so with my tremors. My hand also likes to curl up, which can look like fidgeting or discomfort. Doctors don’t know why this happens, but so far it seems benign.

Any advice for dealing with these visible symptoms it in an interview where they may be misinterpreted? As a younger woman, I have learned anxiety is always everyone’s first assumption even if it’s rarely the case.

At the start of the meeting, say this cheerfully and matter-of-factly: “Since we don’t normally see each other in person, I should mention I sometimes have tremors in my hand and jaw — it’s just a medical thing and nothing to worry about!”

That way they’ll know what’s going on and won’t draw the wrong conclusions and they won’t worry about what might be happening. By taking a matter-of-fact tone, you’ll demonstrate that it’s no big deal, and most people will follow your cues.

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

1. My coworker was upset that she wasn’t told to go home early after getting bad news

I have a coworker who recently found out she’d likely have to put her dog to sleep. She was crying at work, understandably so, and it was quite upsetting to see. I went through something similar about three years ago and losing a pet is devastating.

For the rest of the day after finding out, she was berating management for not offering her the opportunity to go home early. The thing is, it’s common knowledge at my job that if you need, or even just want, to go home early, management always says yes. All she had to do was ask, but she thought they should have offered without her asking. She’s an adult (34 years old) and I think she should just ask for what she needs. She’s not a new employee, has asked to leave early several times before, and she has never been told no. That leads me to believe it was not a case of her thinking she’d be denied leaving early if she asked. Do you think management was wrong for not offering to send her home early?

Not particularly. I mean, yes, if her manager knew what was going on or how upset she was, it would have been kind to say, “Would you rather go home early for the day?” But it’s not a huge deal that they didn’t offer it proactively. If she wanted to leave, she needed to say that herself.

Is she often irrational? If not, I’d write this off to her just being in an upsetting moment; grief sometimes grabs on to unrelated things.

2. My coworker asked if I have a “side piece”

Is it okay to ask a coworker if they have a “side piece”?

Background: I’ve only been working at this company for a short time. I keep my personal life almost totally separate from work. The coworker who asked me this, Lesley, doesn’t know me well at all. We’ve worked together a few days total. I was told secondhand that Lesley has a romantic interest in me, and I let the wingman know the feelings weren’t mutual.

We were working together one day when Lesley asked if I had a side piece. I was already annoyed and walked away without replying. Should I have said something?

I’m just curious if this is okay, but I don’t want to ask HR and make it a big deal. On one hand, it seems too personal of a question for work, and a quick google makes it seem like “side piece” is kind of offensive and refers to cheating. On the other hand, maybe it’s not really more offensive than asking about a boyfriend or girlfriend (I’m not trying to be judgmental).

No, that’s a rude and inappropriate question to ask someone in most circumstances — and particularly at work and particularly someone who you barely know. What the hell, Lesley?!

3. Should I let my boss know this mistake was my coworker’s, not mine?

I work on a team of two. Technically three, but our manager leads another team as well and leaves most of the day-to-day work to me and my colleague. I am the newest member of the team and joined less than a year ago. My colleague has been on the team for close to five years and has a more established relationship with our manager.

We are responsible for launching compliance courses to the company and we take turns creating and assigning the courses. The last course launched by my colleague was missing some of the people who should have been assigned to it. The stakeholder reached out to us when she noticed people missing on the course completion report. I happened to be the one to see the email first and did the research to find out what happened. After identifying and fixing the error, I replied-all to the email, which included my manager.

My manager then responded directly to me asking what happened. I confirmed it was a mistake on our end, as opposed to a system glitch. I included a screenshot to show the error, but it also displayed the name of the person who created the course (not me). My manager thanked me for doing the research but also mentioned, very seriously, that we can’t allow these mistakes to happen in the future. I agreed.

My colleague was not given the same reminder, as far as I’m aware. Coincidentally, she left the office later that same day to go on a week-long vacation. She did not see the email about the error before she left, so I can’t just wait for her to take ownership of the mistake.

My manager does not seem to be aware that the error did not originate with me, although it should have been clear from the screenshot. I am a firm believer in letting my work speak for itself and not bringing anyone else down to elevate my own reputation. However, I’m afraid this could affect my performance review if I don’t set the record straight. Should I speak up or will doing so make me look like a tattletale?

How big of a deal is the mistake? If it’s a big deal, then you can say something like, “I’m taking seriously what you said about what happened with the course assignment, and I’ll make sure Jane knows this happened when she’s back.” Otherwise, though, if it’s not a huge issue and is more the kind of thing that your boss is unlikely to be thinking about a week from now, just let it go (although you also could have said, “I’ll make sure Jane knows this happened when she’s back” in the moment; there’s just less need to go back and say it now).

4. Pregnancy when you’re remote and no one sees you

I work for a matrixed multinational company that has a strong WFH culture and very limited travel budgets. In my core role, I manage a global team and work with other global teams who I almost never meet in person. I am also affiliated with a local office where I am active in a secondary role and see colleagues in person whenever I choose to go into the office. I work much more closely with the colleagues in my primary role than with the colleagues in my secondary role.

I give birth in a couple months. I shared the news with my manager and direct reports at the three-month mark, but did not bring it up in most other work meetings unless someone directly asked me, “What’s new with you?” At this point, colleagues at the local office have put two plus two together because I have morphed into an anthropomorphic beachball, but virtual colleagues often remain unaware.

How you would approach pregnancy awareness in offices when so many people work from home and have cross-functional projects that are intense but kept on relatively short timelines, with limited-to-no interaction on a personal level? My primary motivation in having others know is to check/set their expectations on my current and future project capacity and energy levels. I have now added an email signature that shares my parental leave dates (waited until one month out from the start date) but I am curious if there are any other suggestions.

Just with a matter-of-fact email about your leave, sent to anyone who might be impacted from it. For example: “I want to let you know that I expect to be out from X to X on maternity leave. You can contact ___ in my absence.” That’s it!

5. How should my resume handle a year where I had nothing to do at work?

For about a year, I was on an “experimental” team that sounded right up my alley when I transferred into it … but then we had no direction and almost no work to do, and spent most of the time “training” on skills that we never used (which have been useless to me in my current role). In the whole time I was on that team, we had, generously, maybe 2-4 weeks’ worth of work.

And now I’m updating my resume for the first time in years, and I’m unsure what to do. Part of me wants to pretend I was still in my previous role that year, or in my current one, but I worry that adding in that extra year to either without anything to show for it would look bad, too. (I’m not worried about titles; mine was never changed from one role to the other.) So is that what I should do? Or should I leave it in my resume and just address it as it comes up in interviews?

If your title didn’t change, that is a complete non-issue! You don’t need to specify that you were on a different team for that year; since your title remained the same, you can just not mention it. It’s just your title and the dates you held that title, followed by bulleted accomplishments from your time with that title. They don’t need to know that none of those accomplishments happened during a particular 12 months in that overall period.