It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. My boss wants me to make DIY disinfecting wipes to send to employees
My role is administrative in nature and I tend to do any ad hoc projects for the company. My boss is suggesting we put together COVID care package for our team, which I think is a great idea. However, supplies are still limited and I feel she is asking only for herself because SHE does not have any of the supplies and this would be the easy way for her to get them.
I was able to get together masks and hand sanitizer after much going around town. Now she wants disinfecting wipes, which are very hard to get anywhere. She suggested I look up do-it-yourself recipes to make my own for the team. I got really annoyed at this; it involves trying to obtain more resources that are not readily available, like bleach. This puts me in a position of running around trying to obtain things that aren’t easy to get, and frankly I do not want to wait in long lines and have to visit five Costcos around town. Plus I have other work on my plate. Isn’t hand sanitizer and masks enough to get the message across to employees that we’re trying? Am I completely being selfish in not wanting to do this?
You’re not being selfish; she’s being unreasonable. Asking you make do-it-yourself disinfecting wipes for your colleagues?
Say this: “I don’t feel equipped to make disinfecting wipes myself, or to risk the amount of public exposure it would take to try to find all the ingredients for them. I think everyone knows wipes just aren’t available right now and will appreciate what we were able to get. So my plan is to go ahead and put the packages together with what we have, and I should be able to send them out by (date).”
If she pushes you to do it anyway, say, “I needed to visit a lot of stores to get the other items. I’d need to visit even more to do this, including waiting in long lines with people not wearing masks. I don’t feel safe continuing to do that. I’m also really not equipped to make them myself. I’d like to send out what we have and then return to focusing on X and Y.”
2. Company won’t reimburse me for my plane ticket because they canceled my interview
Earlier this year, I was interviewing all over the U.S. for positions in a field where long hiring timelines are normal. One organization had me purchase a flight to be reimbursed, but the interview turned virtual as the pandemic escalated. At the time, we agreed to keep the flight credit in hope that I’d be able to use it later if they went forward with me as a candidate. However, they now have a hiring freeze on that position. Meanwhile, I received a different offer that I’ve just finalized (yay!).
I still have this non-refundable and non-transferable $750 flight credit. Unfortunately, the organization told me they can’t reimburse it because the flight credit is essentially like cash that I could use for something other than traveling to their site. For a lot of reasons, I’m unlikely to use it before its expiration date — I won’t be flying for my upcoming relocation, my new city will be close to my hometown and family, and I consider planning optional travel amidst a pandemic to be reckless and unwise. Is there a way I can politely ask them to reconsider reimbursement?
Yeah, that isn’t at all okay of them. You spent this money only because they assured you they’d reimburse you, and you shouldn’t be out $750 (!) as a result.
Say this: “If the sticking point is the credit, I’d be happy to ask the airline to cancel the credit entirely, but I do need you to cover the expense as we had agreed. I advanced the cost of the ticket because I took your promise to reimburse me on good faith, and could not have purchased it otherwise. I can’t afford to be out $750, which is a significant sum to me. How do we get this taken care of?”
If that doesn’t work, I’d seriously consider asking a lawyer for help. This is spectacularly crappy of them.
3. Should I interview just for practice?
I work in academia and currently have a non-tenure-stream appointment. In my case, that means a full-time position with full benefits, and a four-year contract that can be renewed indefinitely but limited potential for salary increases and a higher workload than people in tenure-track positions.
Due to some recent modest success in my field, I’m in a position where I’m pretty sure I could get a tenure-track job if I were willing to move to another university in a smaller city or more remote area (and more senior professors have told me the same, so I don’t think it’s just my ego talking). However, I don’t really want to do this. I live near family and cherished friends, in a city with a low cost of living that I love, and I don’t think a better job elsewhere would match the other benefits of staying where I am.
A few of my friends (who are also professors) have suggested that I should go on the job market and see if I can get to the interview stage, just for the sake of practicing interviewing. That way, if a tenure-track position does open up in my home city (at my current university or another nearby college), or if I change my mind about moving some day, I’ll be better prepared for the process and will hopefully get the job.
I can see that this would be beneficial. Academic interviews are typically day-long affairs, and though I have learned some things about them by attending the interview proceedings at my own university when candidates visit, I’ve never gone through the process myself. However, it seems like kind of a jerk move to use a university’s resources to interview for a job that I know I don’t want. In addition to them paying the cost of flights, hotel, etc., there’s the time that everyone in the department invests in interviewing and considering candidates. And I’ve seen first-hand how exhausting and disappointing it is for a department to conduct a search and not end up with a hire at the end of the whole (loooooong) process.
Is this just the cost of doing business for them, and something I’d be smart to try? Universities have been known to do the opposite, interviewing a couple of candidates out of obligation to have a complete hiring process, when they already know who they want to hire. Or am I right that I shouldn’t waste their time and resources, and shouldn’t take the chance away from someone who really wants the job? Most schools only bring in the top three candidates for an interview, so I know it’s a long shot that I’d even find myself in this position if I did apply.
Don’t do it. Not only will you be wasting the university’s time and money, but you’ll be taking a coveted, highly competitive slot from someone who really wants it and could potentially get the job otherwise. The academic job market is awful enough without people taking very limited interview slots just for practice.
If you were genuinely open to accepting the job, that would be different — but if you’re just doing it for practice, you’d really be operating in bad faith. Don’t do it.
4. Can I ask for time off in between jobs?
I’m currently interviewing for a job and as the prospect of switching jobs during a mandatory work-from-home edges its way into reality, I’ve been wondering if I can still ask for a week off between start dates. Granted, I’ll still be at home and technically able to work but I’d still like to have that time to have some time to reset my brain. Is it still okay to do this? And if it is, what’s a better way to request that time other than “Brain tired! Brain want rest!”
It’s completely fine and normal to take some time off in between jobs. You don’t even really need to “ask” for it — you can just say, “Would June 20 work as a start date?” If they ask if there’s any way you can start sooner, you can say, “I need to give my current job two weeks notice, and then I’d like a week in between to wrap some things up and to have a few days in between the old role and the new one.”
One additional week is highly unlikely to be a big deal, but if for some reason it won’t work for them (for example, if they need you there for a training class that’s only offered every few months or something), they’ll tell you. But it’s a completely normal thing to do, people do it all the time, and it’s not any less acceptable just because they know you’ll be at home.
5. Hiring freezes and job offers
I love your advice and am sure it contributed to where I am now — two competing (kind of) job offers! Unfortunately, the first job, which I like a little more, told me about a month ago that they had a hiring freeze. However, they said they would be able to move forward with hiring “hopefully by September.” They said they would not ask me to wait until then, but that they would contact me when they are in a position to hire again and see if I hadn’t already found full-time work. I was disappointed but said yes of course I understand and that I hoped they’d be in touch. I continued interviewing and have been offered another job with a start date in mid-July. It’s less close to what I want, but the pay is about comparable.
Would it be worth it to get back in touch and say I received another offer, and could they offer me the position with a start date later in the year? Should I even say anything at all, or just assume it’s not going to happen and move on? Luckily I am in a position where I could forgo a new job for a little while, but I’m hesitant to turn down this most recent offer without a more solid plan in place. For context. I am in an industry where many jobs are going virtual with little interruption in business, but fewer new clients are being referred so many places have had hiring freezes. Although I’m not worried at all about things bouncing back to normal in a few months, new postings have been very scarce in the month or two I’ve been job searching.
I’d be very wary of doing that. For one thing, if they felt confident about offering you a position to start in the fall, they probably already would have done that — but they sound like they don’t know for sure when they’ll be able to move forward. They hope it will be the fall, but it might not be.
More importantly, though, even if they did agree to do that, you can’t rely on the job truly materializing in the fall. You don’t want to be in a situation where they you offer you a job with a fall start date, you accept and stop your job search, and then in September they tell you they won’t be ready to hire this year after all — and so you’ve got to start a new search from scratch at that point.
That job might never re-materialize. Or if it does, they might not offer it to you again — they might have someone else come along who they think is stronger, or it might go to someone internal in some reshuffling, or so forth.
You’ve really go to proceed as if there’s no job offer there (because right now there isn’t) and evaluate the offer you do have on its own merits.
my boss wants me to make DIY disinfecting wipes to mail to employees, company won’t reimburse my plane ticket, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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