It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. I was fired because of a tarot card reading
I worked for a company for many years, always receiving excellent reviews and having strong relationships with my coworkers. I *loved* my job. Last year, I went through a series of personal tragedies in a very short period of time. I sunk into a deep depression and my performance suffered. At first, I had an amazing supervisor who checked on me regularly, worked with me to accommodate therapy appointments, etc., but they left for a new job and a new boss came in. I explained what had been going on and that I was going to need time to deal with some of the legal, logistical, and emotional fallout. They seemed to empathize at first, but that understanding deteriorated and the relationship became extremely difficult. I tried my best, going along with their group bonding exercises (including vision boards) and planning sessions but nothing was ever good enough for my new boss. Eventually, I was fired. Among the reasons listed were my productivity and the claim that my “negativity and dark outlook was bringing down the rest of the team.” This was devastating. I didn’t fight it because I was negotiating a job offer and would have left anyway. I signed my paperwork and left quietly. Many friends from that job have continued to check on me and they helped me land on my feet again, though it’s not been easy.
A few weeks ago, a former coworker reached out and shared with me that the boss who fired me consulted a tarot card reader who said that my leaving would solve their problems. I was fired, at least in part, because of a tarot reading. And the person shared that the boss consults their cards before any major decision in the organization.
I want to let it go, but I can’t. I’m extremely upset. As much as I loved my old job, I don’t want it back. I just want to make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else. Do I reach out to HR and let them know? Do I let this go? What recourse, if any, do I have? Should I list my firing on job applications when asked? If this weren’t happening to me, I might find it funny. But instead, I just want to cry.
Well … the problem is that you’re hearing about this secondhand and it may or may not be true, and if you contact your old company about it, there’s a decent chance the response will be, “Huh? You were fired because of low productivity” (especially since you note that your performance did suffer). And to be fair, while the way you heard this makes it sound ridiculous, plenty of people involve their faith traditions while making difficult decisions; when you set aside that initial reaction (which I had too), this isn’t meaningfully that different from someone talking with a pastor while struggling with whether to fire someone.
That said, you don’t have much to lose from trying, so you could give it a shot and see what happens. You’d want to be clear about what you’re asking for, though — if it’s just to inform them, it’s more likely that it’ll be blown off. But you could frame it as a request for the firing to be reclassified as a layoff and to negotiate what future reference-checkers are told (reasonable things to try when you’re fired in a situation like yours anyway).
2. How do I learn to use business jargon?
How do I learn to think and speak like a business professional? I recently transitioned from academia to a totally new field in the corporate world. Things have been mostly smooth with a major exception: my lack of business experience has left me very bad at thinking like a businessperson and writing in what one might call “business professional” or “corporate”-speak. I mean the type of writing that is to-the-point, puts things in terms of what adds value to the business, and uses phrases like “deliverables,” “relevant stakeholders,” “innovative approach,” “value-added,” etc. I understand it fine enough, but because I’m not versed in the lingo I’m afraid my writing comes off as either amateurish or overblown. The only way I was able to get my resume to sound right was due to a lot of help from friends who are more practiced in writing this way than I am. It has also caused me a lot of difficulty with the self-evaluation in my recent performance review. I had a lot of trouble identifying and writing about my accomplishments in business terms. For example, I’d say, “presented reports about llama grooming” instead of “provided innovative llama grooming strategies to relevant stakeholders” or something like that (that clunkiness is exactly what I’m talking about!).
How do people learn to think and speak about their job goals and duties in this way?
Noooooo! The type of writing and speaking you’re taking about is a problem, not something to be emulated. Your “before” example on your resume is fine; your “after” example is truly terrible and exactly what ruins resumes. Go back to your old resume, seriously.
If you’re finding you speak in clearer language than some of your colleagues, that’s a good thing. What matters is that you’re easily understood and able to get your points across. The kind of jargony language you’re aspiring to is rightly the target of jokes and mockery. Just because you see it around you doesn’t mean you need to adopt it. (And if anyone has told you that you need to, that’s terribly wrongheaded — like telling someone they need to triple the length of their meetings and get rid of agendas. But it sounds like this is more internally generated than that.)
3. I’m my employee’s landlord and I need her to move
In addition to my day job, I also own apartments and one of my employees at my full-time job lives in one of them. Can she file retaliation against me if I tell her she has to move? The apartment does not have anything to do with our workplace. I would like to fix the place up and it will take me a few months to do so. She pays $200 less and I know I can rent it out for more. Will telling her that she has to move out will cause problems at work?
It depends on your employee, how reasonable she is, what kind of landlord you’ve been, and how much notice you give her. If she’s generally reasonable, you’ve been a good landlord, you give her a generous amount of notice to find other housing, and you comply with the terms of the lease and local laws … it’ll probably be fine. Be aware, though, that because she works for you, you need to be extremely careful about being fair and compassionate here — because otherwise, yes, there could be blowback at work. Not that she’ll file against you for “retaliation” (unless she has some reason to believe this is a retaliatory move), but it could harm the relationship and/or your reputation at work among people who hear about it.
In general, though, you shouldn’t rent to people who work for you. There’s too much potential for problems (everything from the appearance of favoritism if you don’t address it when she does something fireable because you need her rent income, to the impact at work if you need to evict or she needs to press you to meet your legal obligations as a landlord, to the power dynamics making it harder for her to enforce her rights as a tenant).
4. Interviewing when I can’t move part of my face
In 2016 I came down with Ramsay Hunt syndrome. Think of it as a pretty strong Bell’s Palsy with a recovery rate of about 40%. The left side of my face doesn’t fully work. I’m unable to move my left eyebrow and my smile is very lopsided and looks bad, IMO, because I cannot pull up the left side of my mouth.
I’ve been on the hunt for a better job fit and I’m unsure about how I should address this during any interview where someone can see my face. I know that medical discussions should generally stay out of an interview process, but facial expressions are an important part of interviewing and communication. So far, I’ve never said anything to my interviewers regarding my condition, but I also wonder if my inability to properly smile has cost me moving forward in some of these processes.
Similar to yesterday’s letter about interviewing with bad eczema, the easiest thing to do is to address it right up-front: “I should mention that I have a medical condition where I can’t fully move the left side of my face. It doesn’t get in the way of anything, but you might notice it as we talk.” This isn’t a medical discussion; it’s just “here’s some context for something that might otherwise be distracting or misinterpreted” and then you move right along. Good luck!
5. Company ghosted me after I spent hours filling out forms
I am really annoyed that an interviewer ghosted me, am thinking of emailing them to express my frustration, and I’m hoping you can suggest some language.
Before the interview in question, the HR manager sent me, with less than 24 hours notice, a whopping 15 pages of forms that I had to print, fill out, scan, and send back to her before the interview the next day. Quite a bit of it was information that was on my resume, but the form said it was not acceptable to write “see resume.” There was also a lot of stuff that you wouldn’t need until you hired the person or were much closer to doing so — basically all the info for a background check, complete work history, references etc. (This was a first interview.) It took me hours to fill out the forms with unnecessary/duplicative information and get them back to her.
After requesting this of me, no one from this company — neither HR nor the hiring manager — has responded to me in the five weeks since this interview. I’m especially annoyed at the disparity here — that they can’t be bothered to take the two minutes to let me know I didn’t get the job, when they were just fine with making me fill out 15 pages of unnecessary forms. And of course, there’s also the usual frustration that I took time off of my full-time job to go to this interview. I know it will burn a bridge but I’m annoyed enough that I want to say something to HR. What do you think I should say? Should I mention the ridiculousness with the forms or just say “I wish you’d responded to me after I made the effort to come to the office and meet with you, etc.”
Well … it’s possible you’re still in the running. Five weeks after an interview isn’t so long that they’ve definitely moved on, and it’s possible you’re going to hear from them at some point. Given that, I wouldn’t burn the bridge just yet, unless you’re absolutely sure you wouldn’t work for them (in this role or any other).
If you really want to say something, once more time has gone by (maybe another month), you could say something like, “As I’m sure you realize, I put a lot of time into your hiring process, including several hours filling out forms on short notice the night before the interview, and am surprised no one has contacted me about the status of my candidacy, especially when I contacted you to ask. I realize this may be an oversight — emails get lost, things fall through the cracks — but not responding to candidates who take the time to interview with you gives such a poor impression of your company that I thought I’d bring it to your attention.”
But it’s unlikely to make an impression on them (other than possibly being an obstacle if you ever apply there in the future). This behavior is so common at this point that companies really don’t see it as a big deal, although it’s horribly rude. The reality is, they’re more likely to think you’re being a prima donna (although you aren’t). That said, there’s value in candidates pushing back on this, since if no one does, it definitely won’t change.
I was fired because of a tarot card reading, how do I learn business jargon, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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