the event I volunteered for wants too much of my time, company is becoming more conservative, and more

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

1. The event I volunteered for wants too much of my time

I was asked to volunteer at a gala for an organization that has nothing to do with my day-to-day work or employer, by a slightly senior coworker who is involved with the organization. I, along with two of my coworkers, agreed to volunteer at the event. When I agreed to help, I was agreeing to a single week night, from 4 pm – 9 pm to assist.

A week before the event, the coordinator, “Pam,” emailed all the volunteers and requested a meeting in the middle of the work day. Pam wanted to give us instruction for the event and said it would take, at most, 30 minutes. It ended up lasting over an hour, and was clearly more of a planning session than instruction. I was annoyed to spend my lunch hour helping plan an event that should have already been hammered out weeks prior. But the event went smoothly and I was happy to help out. I pretty much forgot about it as the weeks passed.

Now, a month and a half later, Pam has reached out to schedule a debriefing on the event. She wants to block out a lunch hour to discuss how everything went. She’s framing it like, “I know we promised you all a follow up meeting.” I don’t remember talking about this at all, and I’m not sure why any of the volunteers would have wanted this either. At this point, I really feel like the importance they see in this event is getting a little ridiculous. The tasks we had were things like set up and take down, handing people brochures, and hanging up coats. It was very simple and I’m not sure what we would have to debrief on.

I really don’t want to do this. I have no feedback to give. I have had an extremely busy month and can barely remember specific details about the event. And I really don’t care to give up another lunch hour for this. I was happy to help, but the event is over and I want to be done with my obligations to them. It would be different if I felt passionately about their mission, but I don’t. Am I ridiculous for feeling strongly about not wanting to do this? If it is reasonable for me to not go, how should I word that to Pam?

You’re not being unreasonable at all, and your obligation ended when you finished the work you agreed to do a month and a half ago. Pam doesn’t have ongoing claims on your time! It should be okay to respond back with, “I won’t be able to make this because my schedule is really crunched right now, but I wish you all the best in your work.”

2. I’m queer and worried our company is becoming too conservatively Christian to keep me

Most of my company’s communication happens on Slack. There’s around 100 employees and we’re mostly young techies, even if we aren’t all developers and engineers. It’s common for everyone (from C-level down) to swear, keysmash, use exclamations and acronyms on Slack—basic internet speak.

Recently I posted “oh my god I love it” in response to a feature a coworker made. I got an automatic Slack response telling me that if I wasn’t actually referring to the deity, I shouldn’t say that as it makes people uncomfortable. This has never been an issue raised before, by HR or individuals.

I checked who created the response. It’s our head of marketing, who I know is a relatively devout Christian. It’s set to go off whenever anyone says “oh my god,” “goddamn,” etc. I would be willing to write this off as a weirdly passive-aggressive way to tell us that they don’t like anyone, even non-Christians, breaking the second commandment, except there’s been a lot of talk from the high-ups recently about “values” and how LGBTQ+ stuff is too controversial/inappropriate for work. Those conversations were already worrying me because I’m queer, and I’m not out to anyone outside my department or above supervisor-level. Now I’m scared that this response means the company is actively shifting towards conservative Christian values, and that my job/standing at the company may be in danger if I’m outed. Am I being paranoid?

If there’s been a sudden increase in higher-ups talking about how LGBTQ+ stuff is too controversial or inappropriate (!) for work … that’s not a good sign.

On its own, the fact that someone programmed in automatic Slack responses to “oh my god” is pretty weird. But combine it with the vapors over LGBTQ+ stuff, and I’d be worried you’re moving toward the Handmaid’s Tale.

There’s a lot of info I don’t have here, like how long you’ve worked there, how senior you are, how much standing and influence you have, and what kind of relationship you have with your boss and others above you. Depending on some of those answers, it could make sense to try to suss out what’s going on (is something changing? what’s driving it? where’s it headed?). But it also might make sense to skip that and look for a workplace that doesn’t find your very existence too controversial or inappropriate to talk about. I’m sorry.

3. Company-wide emails warning us not to do whatever just got someone fired

When an employee at my workplace is fired for misbehavior, in the next day or so, management sends out a company-wide email warning people to not do the the thing that got the employee fired. For example, Joe has been very obviously mishandling widgets for the past couple of weeks. Joe suddenly no longer shows up for work. A couple of days after Joe’s disappearance, there’s a company-wide email that says, “Be mindful that mishandling widgets will result in disciplinary action, up to and including termination.” Joe’s name isn’t mentioned in the email. But Joe is gone and everyone knows that Joe has been mishandling widgets, so it seems pretty obvious that Joe was fired for mishandling widgets. Is this within the bounds of reasonable management behavior, given that a manager going around saying, “We fired Joe on Monday because he mishandled widgets” is a no-no?

Is there a separate announcement that Joe is no longer with the company? If not, this is very weird. People need to know when someone is no longer there, so that they don’t continue to send them emails and wait on status updates and so forth, and so that they know how to go to in their place.

But if they’re doing that part, and these “remember not to drag-race in the parking lot” emails are going out separately … well, it depends. If they have reason to think clearer instruction on this stuff is necessary, then it makes sense to provide it. But if there’s no reason to think anyone needs the refresher, then it’s odd and comes across as weirdly disconnected … and sort of excessively cautious, like they think it helps them legally to issue this kind of reminder or something like that. Or like they like to manage by group email, which is not a good tactic.

4. Is it rude to ignore cold contacts from recruiters?

I am not job hunting, and I get a lot of recruiters who I haven’t worked with in the past cold contacting me to see if I’d be interested in an opportunity. (This often happens via LinkedIn but has been happening increasingly often via my personal email also.) I just ignore their emails since I’m not interested. But lately I’ve had a few extremely persistent recruiters who follow up once a day or so, and they’ve started to imply that I’m being rude by not responding! Today’s email explicitly said, “If you’re uninterested in the opportunity, could you at least let me know?”

This seems unreasonable to me! I’m not job hunting and I don’t feel like I should have to spend my time personally turning down multiple unsolicited job emails a day. (It’s particularly annoying to me that most of these recruiters assume I live in NYC because my company is based there, even though my LinkedIn says I live elsewhere and work remotely.) Am I actually being rude? Should I be shooting off quick rejection emails just so they don’t keep bothering me?

You’re not being rude. They’re doing the email equivalent of cold-calling and they’re not entitled to responses.

That said, if someone follows up with you, it’s probably in your own interests to respond and say you’re not interested so that they don’t continue to contact you. But their implication that you’ve somehow been remiss in not responding is off-base (and particularly rich coming from an industry notorious for not responding to job seekers).

5. Alumni email addresses when job searching

I’m six months away from being done with grad school and am about to start job hunting. I really hate my Gmail address but can’t seem to get a better one. My school only has email addresses that end in @alumni.UniversityName.com. I worry that if I use this email it will look odd or against professional norms. What is your opinion on using alumni email addresses for job hunting?

It’s totally fine and normal to use an alumni email address, especially when you recently attended the school. Use it without worry.

the event I volunteered for wants too much of my time, company is becoming more conservative, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.



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