It’s five answers to five questions, and a sixth thing. Here we go…
1. My daughter’s managers complained to me about her work
My daughter is 19 but lives at home. She has had a full-time job at a local daycare center ever since graduating high school. I dropped by her place of employment the other day to tell her something. All three managers were in the front office. I smiled and greeted them with, “Hi. How’s it going?” I was shocked when, instead of the standard response, I got a barrage of complaints from all three about my daughter’s work performance. Apparently, she’s been repeatedly written up for neglect of safety issues with the toddlers in her care and lack of proper sanitation of her classroom. They gave details as to the disciplinary action and warnings they’d given her in the past six months, how many times she’d been written up, how they were at their wit’s end with her, and how close she was to being fired.
I glazed over almost immediately. Seriously, how is this my problem? My daughter is an adult. It seemed that by sharing these issues with me, they somehow expect me to punish her for her workplace sins. I let them know in no uncertain terms that my daughter is their problem when she’s at work, and it’s their job to deal with her performance issues in whatever way they see fit, including termination. They were clearly offended at my response.
Isn’t what these managers did illegal? Or at the very least unethical and unprofessional? Doesn’t an employee have some expectation of privacy in the workplace? At the very least to not have the contents of their personnel file shared with those without a need to know? Who tattles to an employee’s mommy regarding said employee’s work performance? Am I missing something?
It’s not illegal; in the U.S., there’s no right to privacy with this kind of work information. But it’s certainly unprofessional and inappropriate, and I’m glad you told them they should be managing their employee rather than complaining to her mom. (And really, if they’re that frustrated with her, they have a variety of tools available to deal with that, including letting her go.)
It sounds like they were hoping you’d add to their pressure on her — maybe talk some sense into her or otherwise use your influence to get her to improve her performance. But she’s an adult and that’s not an appropriate thing for them to ask an employee’s parent. (Frankly, even if she weren’t an adult, it would still be inappropriate. They need to manage her.)
2. Should I offer to go to my boss’s house for a weekly check-in?
I started a new job at the beginning of March. I worked for two weeks in the office and now one week from home. Before we began work-from-home, my boss expressed concern at my being so new and not being in the office together.
I happen to live within walking distance of my boss’s house. We are both healthy. Should I offer to go over once a week for a face-to-face meeting?
We have been doing pretty well this week as a team on Skype, but I’m worried that prolonged distance will impede my ability to build my relationship with her.
Absolutely not. Do not do that. We need to be keeping our distance from other people right now. The point of having people work from home during this crisis is to slow the spread of the virus, so that people don’t die (which might not be you, but could be the person you spread it to — or it could be someone else with a medical crisis totally unrelated to COVID-19 who can’t get care if our hospitals are overwhelmed). It doesn’t matter that you and your boss both seem healthy. You can have the virus for up to two weeks before you show symptoms, and you can be infecting other people during that time.
People will die because other people aren’t taking this seriously. Stay home.
3. Does my start-up thinking I’ll keep working when I’m not getting paid?
I started working at a start-up a few months ago and we opened and had a great start before Covid-19 ruined everything and we had to shut down temporarily. Because we’re so new, we weren’t out of the red yet and we’ve known since the day we closed that we only have one more paycheck for the staff, including myself and the other manager. We’ve been working from home, trying to pivot and keep the business afloat, and we’ve all been working pretty hard on various projects to make that happen.
My issue is, I get the feeling that I need to explicitly say that my last day is the day that next paycheck lands, and that I need to file for unemployment and find a new job after that. There has been a lot of talk about how to tell our teams about unemployment stuff but no mention of me and the other manager returning our computers or anything.
I believe in the company and hope we stay afloat and figure everything out, and I’d come back to work for them in a heartbeat, but I can’t miss multiple paychecks and keep working full-time for them. In order to be eligible for unemployment, they need to recognize me as laid off, and I want to clarify that we’re on the same page. Just in a polite, empathetic, reasonable way.
How do I do this without burning this bridge? I’m really concerned because the feeling I’m getting from our meetings is that we’re all just going to continue going full speed ahead through this pandemic and I can’t do that if I’m not being paid for my time.
Say this: “We’ve talked about plans for the rest of the staff, but we haven’t talked about what this means for my role. My assumption is that there likely won’t be paid work for me after (date), and I should be planning to file for unemployment and look for other work after that date. Is that right?”
If the response sounds in any way like they’re hoping you’ll continue working unpaid or they’re hoping to be able to pay you at some undetermined future date, say this, “I love this work and I’d come back in a heartbeat, but I’m not in a position where I can keep working while missing paychecks. If that’s the situation, I’d need to be laid off with the others so I can collect unemployment and look for other full-time work.” To help preserve the relationship, you could add, “I wish I had the option to be more flexible, but financially I’m not in a position where I can do that.” (To be clear, you shouldn’t need to say that — they should understand people don’t work for for free or for promises that may never come to fruition — but sometimes that kind of language can smooth things over if their expectations are wacky.)
4. Do I owe my friend a personal response on a message I forwarded on her behalf?
A classmate of mine from grad school now works in a research director position. She reached out to me on LinkedIn informally to ask if my market research employer might be interested in a possible collaboration on a project about Covid-19. While outside of our normal purview, I certainly thought it merited a possible look and had her send me an informational email, which I have now forwarded to folks in my organization who have decision making power to pursue this further.
I’ve taken the necessary steps so far to get this information out and it’s up to those people in my company to make a decision. Do I owe my friend a personal response to say “hey, thanks for thinking of us but we will pass” or should I leave that up to others in my org? Anything else I should say to her now?
Sometimes in situations like these, the person in your shoes won’t hear back from the decision-makers at all. It’s possible you’ll just get a “thanks, we’ll take a look” and nothing else or, if the people you contacted get a lot of these suggestions, you might not even get that much. So unless you know for sure that they’re going to get back to you with their decision one way or another, I would just let your friend know that you’ve passed it on to the right people internally and they’ll be in touch if they want to talk more.
But if the people you forwarded it to do get back to you about it, at that point you could ask, “Is it okay for me to update Jane with your response or are you contacting her directly?”
5. Can I ask for a better chair for working from home?
I work at a nonprofit private school which is 100% privately funded in the USA. I am an administrative manager on the business side; no academic interaction. We are on distance learning and remote work due to Covid-19.
The school provided me with a laptop and I’m able to do 90% of my job. I’ve set up a little office in my kitchen since I don’t have a desk or any kind of office setup in my home. This is day two of working from home. I have found that my kitchen chair is NOT going to work for me sitting in it for eight hours a day. I have nothing that would substitute as a physically healthy chair to work in. How do I ask my boss to have the school buy me a chair to use at home? And do I offer to bring it to the school when we return so it can be used as needed by the organization? I’m guessing a decent chair will cost at least a couple of hundred dollars.
In general, employers should want employees to have work-from-home set-ups that make them productive and comfortable. But that doesn’t mean they’re all willing to pay for it, and private schools often have notoriously tight budgets. But you can try posing the question: “I don’t have a chair at home that works for sitting at a computer all day and will need to get one. Since I am only getting it to work from and because of the current situation, is that a business expense that I could submit for reimbursement? I’d be happy to bring it in with me when we return to work.”
6. Employers are still hiring
Just wanted to let you know that job-hunters shouldn’t give up hope due to social distancing. We just had a candidate accept our offer, and he’s starting on April 13th. It’s true that we interviewed him in person (the day before our office closed), but we’re also desperately in need of another person, and hiring is going forward despite the closure. I for one would be overjoyed to interview folks via video call and find someone we can bring on, and I’ve seen no indication we can’t hire without in-person contact.
In addition, we’re a little worried the stock market situation might inspire a hiring freeze, so we’re motivated to hire NOW. I would encourage job seekers to follow up (in a non-obsessive way) with anyone they’ve been interviewing with to see if they’re planning to move forward during the self-isolation period. I think there’s a real chance teams will want to grab people while they can.
Thank you!
my daughter’s manager complained to me about her, weekly meetings at my boss’s house, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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