It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. My boss says no one else is allowed to get pregnant
I work in a very tight-knit office of about 15 people, and most of us are women in our 20’s and 30’s. We all work hard and have duties split up fairly, though none of us has time to take on any extra tasks or clients.
We just recovered from a few month struggle of one of my colleagues being out on maternity leave, and now my boss is “joking” that none of us is allowed to get pregnant because we can’t afford to lose someone again. The last time I wasn’t feeling well, she immediately asked if I was pregnant and then asked when my next menstrual cycle is coming! She even then took it as far as saying that she was going to ask all of us ladies to report to her when our cycles start each month so she doesn’t have to worry constantly.
I know this is inappropriate, and I know that she is joking(ish) since we are all very close friends. But I’m kind of at a loss of what to say during these conversations because, truth be told, my husband and I actually ARE trying to start a family right now! Is it best to just laugh it off when comments like this come up? I don’t want to come across as weird and stiff.
Even if we take it as a given that she’s joking, this kind of joke is incredibly inappropriate and overstepping. There’s very real pressure on women about how their reproductive plans will affect them professionally (pressure that men almost never face) and it’s crap.
Laughing it off is an option if it’s the one that feels safest to you. But ideally the next time she makes one of these comments, you’d respond with something like:
* “I know you don’t mean that, but even joking about it is so bad for women. Let’s not do that.”
* “Excuse me?”
* “I know you’re joking, but I really don’t want to talk about my reproductive plans or menstrual cycle at work.”
* “You know, men don’t get these comments.”
* “Could you please not joke about that? Given how much pressure women face around this stuff, it’s just not funny.”
You could also talk to her one-on-one and say, “You’ve been joking about tracking our periods and making sure no one else gets pregnant. I know you’re kidding, but you’re our boss — and there are employers that really do penalize women who get pregnant or try to influence their personal reproductive decisions. I know you’d never want to make any of us truly worry about that, so I wanted to tell you how uncomfortable it’s making me and ask if you’d stop.”
2. Can I ask job candidates if they’ve ever disparaged an employer online?
I’ve seen a rise recently in employees leaving organizations and then trashing them online. As a hiring manager who’s been burned by that sort of thing just this year, I see that as a huge red flag in job candidates (unless they were being a whistleblower about something truly egregious, like a criminal offense on the part of their employer). While I check social media accounts, I also know that savvier candidates will scrub that sort of history from their accounts. Can I simply ask job candidates if they have ever publicly disparaged one of their former employers, and if so, what their reason for doing so was?
Don’t ask that. That question will strike most people as incredibly odd, particularly since the answer for most people will be “no.” It’ll end up sounding like, “Employees disparage us online and I want to know if you’re likely to do that” — and then they’ll start wondering why people are disparaging you so much, and assuming there’s more to the story.
Plus, some people will have spoken negatively about an employer with good reason — they didn’t get bad or were harassed or discriminated against, etc. You’d be putting good candidates in a position where they’d feel highly uncomfortable about exactly what you’re after with this question.
There are far more important things to focus on in the limited time you have when interviewing someone. Plus, if you hire the right people and treat them well, getting trash-talked online isn’t going to be a huge problem for you. I mean, yes, it might happen occasionally, but it’s not going to be such a pattern that you need to start weirding out job candidates to screen for it. (And if it is a pattern, something else is going on that needs your attention.)
3. Do I have to announce my engagement at work?
I have caught wind that my boyfriend will be proposing soon (yay!) and I have good reason to suspect it will be around the holidays this year. Assuming I’m not completely off-base here, my question is about sharing life-changing news at work.
The thing is, I am not particularly close with any of my coworkers (except for one who I have become very good friends with), and our company shuts down for a week between Christmas and New Year’s. I 100% plan to tell my work friend regardless, but assuming that I am proposed to during the holiday shut down, do I need to address my engagement with my coworkers once we’re all back? I dread being the center of attention, and I would be more comfortable not pointing it out. But it also seems weird to be walking around with a new ring and exciting news and not tell anyone! My work friend is also the type to bring it up to other people, which I don’t really mind, but would it seem strange if she pointed it out before I did? Am I overthinking this?
If it matters, I am on contract here for a few more months (and certainly will be long gone by the time I get married).
You don’t need to announce it when you’re back at work if you don’t want to! If it comes up on its own at some point — someone notices the ring or your work friend mentions it — you can just say, “Yes! I got engaged over the holidays.” If people are shrieking and demanding to know why you didn’t speak up sooner and so forth, you can say, “Oh, I hate being the center of attention” or “I’m not sure!” or “I’ve been pretty low-key about it” or “Well, I’m telling you now!” In most offices, if it’s weird, it’ll only be weird briefly and then people will move on from “why didn’t you tell us” to “yay, engagement!”
4. How do I take a networking contact up on his offer?
I have a question about networking (which, even in my mid-30s, makes me deeply uncomfortable). I worked at an elite university for about 4.5 years in a role that was largely administrative but also included some course support, event planning, and other tasks as requested by faculty. Immediately after starting, I got dropped into a complex, high-stakes project; my success turned my temp job to perm, and I was happily placed in the same department as the professor leading the project. He and I maintained a friendly-ish relationship, but I did not work with him directly for the remainder of my time there.
When I left to focus on grad school, he offhandedly mentioned that he could facilitate some introductions at a company that would be an AMAZING opportunity for my new career. I didn’t take him too seriously (frankly, he has better things to do) until he made a point on my last day to emphasize that I should reach out when I’m ready to start actively job hunting. I’m graduating in a few weeks(!!!), so that time has arrived, but I don’t know how to approach it. As a former insider, I’m well aware of how insanely busy he is, so I’m reticent to request even a coffee meeting. On the other hand, I genuinely like him and want him to know how much I appreciate him even considering this favor. He’s also highly visible/well-known and tenured, which makes me feel a) nervous overall, b) a little silly for taking him up on it, and c) like the stakes are much higher than your average networking request. Meanwhile, I’m also trying to mentally prepare for the very real chance that he might totally ignore me, or that even if he does facilitate some intros, it goes nowhere. How do I get over myself and just do the damn thing?
You are over-thinking it! He offered it, he probably meant it, and there’s nothing weird about asking if you can take him up on it now. You don’t even need to request a coffee meeting, especially if he’s busy — you can just send a warm email that says, “When I left X to focus on grad school, you mentioned that you might be able to connect me to contacts at Y. I’m getting ready to graduate and am actively job hunting, so I hoped I might be able to take you up on that. I’d be really grateful for any help you can offer.” (Then insert a few sentences of pleasantries — about his work, or your work, or the holidays, or whatever.)
That’s it!
5. I’m trying to personalize gifts for my staff members
I’m a new manager and we have a limited (but luckily, it’s there!) budget for staff appreciation. I’d like to get staff a little something for the end of the year. It sounds like in the past it’s been gift cards, that sort of thing, and that’s gone over just fine. This fall, I’ve been trying to get to know the staff on a more personal level and thought it may be interesting to get them gifts that are a little more personalized. My concerns are twofold.
First, maybe people don’t want kitsch. For example, we have someone who is a huge Game of Thrones fan and I wondered about getting them an action figure of their favorite character. Or for our avid dog fan, maybe a little statuette of their favorite breed of dog. But maybe that sort of thing isn’t going to go over well with everyone. The other concern related to it is whether some gifts would cost more than others and if that’s “fair.” We sometimes have some looser lips in the finance portion of our small business and I could see the money person, accidentally or otherwise, slipping the word on gift costs after receiving receipts.
Yeah, you want to keep gifts in the same general price range. They don’t need to be identical to the dollar, but they should be fairly equivalent. When your’e the boss, you don’t want to give one person an iPad and another person a book — even if the book is chosen for them with great care.
Ideally, you’d want to know people enough to know if they’d appreciate kitsch, figurines, etc. before buying that stuff because so many people don’t. That said, most people don’t expect a gift from a manager or colleague to be perfectly tailored for them; it’s understood that you don’t know them as well as their BFF or significant other does. You should put some thought into to it so that you’re not buying hams for vegetarians or giving “An Intro to Knitting” to someone who’s never expressed any interest in knitting or other crafts, but it’s okay if you don’t precisely nail it as long as you genuinely try. (I put together a gift guide with some ideas, by the way.)
my boss says no one is allowed to get pregnant, asking job candidates if they’ve ever disparaged an employer, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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