It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. My office plays religious music throughout the building
I work for a very large, non-religious company in a technical role. In the building where I work, we can’t have headphones, so they play XM radio stations through speakers that are in every hallway and most rooms. The staff that controls the station switches the channel on a daily basis and we get a decent mix of rock, decades, country, top hits, etc. However, at least once a week, sometimes more, the station for the day is a religious music station. Not like Christmas music or country music with religious themes, but the sort of thing you might hear played in a modern church service where God and prayer are the central theme of every song.
I don’t have a problem with this music in general outside the workplace. There’s a local coffee shop I love that plays the same sort of stuff and it never bothers me when I go there. But for some reason it really gets to me at work. I can wear ear plugs at my desk and we often turn the music off in my office area, but everywhere else in the building I don’t have way of tuning it out. I also work in an area frequented by customers, although I’ve never heard one complain.
I want to bring it up that the super-religious themed music bothers me, but I’m really worried that if I do so they’re going to solve it by turning off the music altogether. I know everyone really likes having music to listen to and I don’t want to be the person that ruins it for everyone. Is it unreasonable to request that this kind of station not be played at work?
It’s reasonable to ask that religious music not be played at work, especially all day long when people can’t turn it off.
I’d frame it this way: “I wouldn’t expect you to please everyone with the musical choices, but we’ve been playing religious music about God and prayer. That doesn’t feel appropriate for work — or customers, for that matter. Could we stick with secular music and take the religious channel out of the rotation?”
If they respond by turning off music altogether, that would be a bizarre overreaction (unless they’ve had other complaints about other channels, in which case you’re not the one who will have caused that action anyway).
2. My new boss asked everyone how many people they’ve slept with
I recently got a new boss and things have gotten weird. To kick off her experience, she hosted a series of team bonding activities which included a lot of happy hours and lunches. During the happy hours, she would consume a lot of alcohol and make sexual jokes/comments. It didn’t really bother me and I’ll admit I found myself chuckling a few times, but after several weeks of happy hours I realized things we’re going too far.
At our last outing, she literally asked everyone there how many sexual partners they’d had, and if we shied away from answering she booed us until we acquiesced. I didn’t know what to say so I just made up a number to get out of the line of questioning. She also asked if we preferred oral or hand jobs.
I wanted to leave but I felt pressured to stay because those who attend the happy hours seem to get more perks — flexible hours, work from home days, etc. I don’t know what to do. I feel like since I originally laughed/engaged in the more surface level sexual jokes/comments, now I’m part of the problem.
WTF?!
You’re allowed to object to this even though you laughed along earlier. First, it’s really common for people to laugh/act okay with this kind of thing even when they’re not, because work dynamics can make it uncomfortable to do otherwise. (Which is one reason why people shouldn’t assume colleagues are okay with inappropriate topics just because they’re not explicitly objecting.) Second, you’re allowed to change your mind. Maybe it didn’t bother you at first but it does now. You’re allowed to feel it’s gone too far.
Please talk to your HR department. What your manager is doing is wildly inappropriate, is almost surely making people other than you uncomfortable, and is opening the company to legal liability. When you talk to them, make sure not to pull any punches — give them all the details you gave here. Make sure to include the differences you’re seeing in perks — they need to shut the whole thing down, but that one will take special attention from them. You should also let them know you’re concerned about retaliation and ask for their help in ensuring this doesn’t affect the way your boss treats you.
3. Should I use a pseudonym when I write about aliens and tentacle monsters?
I’m a relatively young and currently junior government employee, but I foresee making my career in government long-term. Outside of work, my major hobby is writing. I know I’m unlikely to ever make a living writing (part of the reason I have my main career) but I’ve had some of my writing published in a few locations, and am starting to do what all new writers in my industry/genre must do, building up a body of work and other related published writing like reviews, essays, etc.
Currently this is all done under the same name I use at work, the name everyone knows me by. But the genre I write in (mostly speculative fiction) is a little weird. Think non-sexual but odd, including aliens and tentacle monsters and other strange elements of the genre (not serious literary fiction!). I’m starting to think about whether I should write under a pseudonym, or at least a name that isn’t immediately connected to me, like my middle name. I’m early enough in my writing career that it would be possible to change some of my published works to be under a new name and start networking and publishing under the new name, but it would have some negative impacts on my work short-term (like being less able to encourage friends to read or share my writing).
How likely is writing and being published in a kind of weird genre to negatively impact my “day job” career? What would be your advice?
If your writing was highly sexual, I might give you a different answer because we’re a prudish society, but with this stuff I think you’re fine continuing to use your real name. That’s especially true because you plan to build your career in government, where people do all sorts of weird things outside of work that aren’t allowed to be considered in government hiring; the government is very big on scoring you against a specific set of qualifications and not considering anything else.
4. Family noise when working from home due to quarantine
My husband’s workplace has a pretty flexible policy around working from home. All employees are set up with a laptop and phone immediately upon hire and permitted to work from home whenever possible (any time they’re not required for facetime with clients, to do on-site repairs, etc). One of the ironclad rules, though, is that there can be no background noise on phone calls.
I’m a freelancer and stay-at-home mom caring for our rambunctious toddler and our three-month-old puppy. Background noise is basically inescapable in our small house. We live in a rural area and my husband works a late shift; there aren’t many places I can take my child to keep her out of the house during his 3 pm – 2 am shift. His job in tech support requires a lot of unplanned phone calls. Nothing about our home situation is conducive to working from home, so he doesn’t do it! He goes into the office and the problem is solved.
At least until recently, when his workplace announced that any employee who travels outside the state must submit an application to HR detailing when and where they will be traveling, and be prepared to potentially be put in quarantine upon return. Employees will be required to work from home during that time or use PTO.
We have a vacation scheduled for next month. We are using five of his ten annual PTO days for the trip, and need to save the other five for accidents and family emergencies. That means, depending on what HR decides, he may be forced to work from home upon our return. We have no idea how to make that work. I can’t wander the streets with a toddler all night; sending him to a co-working space seems to defeat the entire purpose of quarantine. Obviously the area we’re planning to go has no current confirmed cases of COVID, but that could change at any time during the trip. Do we have to cancel our vacation? What can we do?
A reasonable employer will realize that ordering people to work from home temporarily means their working environment during that time may not be as ideal as during more routine work-from-home (such as when they’re doing it regularly or at their own request). That’s usually the case when people have to work from home because of, say, a bad snow storm, and ideally employers would understand it’ll be the case during coronavirus quarantines too.
For peace of mind, your husband could explain the situation to his boss now and talk about options, but I’d go into it with the mindset that this is an emergency situation, and emergency conditions apply.
5. My manager said something odd in my performance review
I just came out of my annual performance review. While mostly positive, my manager made a troubling statement which I’m trying to understand. Some background: I’m the only person at this manufacturing plant with my position, which is lab based. In addition to me, my manager directly oversees the engineers in the plant and has an engineering background.
After going through my accomplishments for the past year, we discussed my goals for this year. Completely normal stuff. There was one goal that is carrying over from last year which I was unable to complete due to waiting for another department to schedule training, which I expressed to him and he understood but said, “There are expectations because you know you get paid more than any of the engineers.”
I of course blew it in the moment and just said “okay” while my head was racing. I have no idea what any of engineers get paid! Plus we have completely different positions and levels of experience. Most of them are 1-3 years out of college and I have 15 years of experience. Does this mean he considers me overpaid? Am I on the short list for layoffs due to my cost? I’m honestly wracking my brain about why he would say this to me thinking it would have a positive spin.
From the context, I doubt he meant that he considers you overpaid or that you’re at the top of a layoff list. I only have limited info, but it sounds like he might have been saying, “I get that another department held this up, but you’re high enough level to do more to try to push it through.”
More importantly, though, when your boss says something that throws you into a tailspin and you don’t know what he meant, ASK!
It’s fine to go back to him and say, “I keep thinking about something you said in my performance review that I wasn’t sure how to interpret. When we were talking about how I wasn’t able to complete X last year, you said there are expectations for me because I get paid more than the engineers. Did you mean I should have done more to push X through? Or something else? It’s stuck with me and I realized I wasn’t fully sure if that’s what you meant.”
my office plays religious music, my new boss asks about our sex lives, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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