It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. My boss gives us pop quizzes on our cross-training
My boss, Cersei, is a brand-new manager, and my coworker (Jon) and I are her guinea pigs for learning how to manage. Jon and I handle different aspects of the same type of work. Cersei wants us to cross-train in each other’s areas, which is great! We already have basic knowledge of each other’s areas of expertise, and it would be good to be better at it.
But Cersei’s method of ensuring we get cross-trained is a little wonky, in my experience. She wants to give us pop quizzes on each other’s areas, while leaving us to handle the actual work of cross-training on our own. This is only my third office-type job, but I have significant retail/food service experience before this, and to me, the pop quiz idea comes off as punitive and ineffective. I would expect actual training to be involved somewhere, some kind of structured teaching of the information, rather than this approach of “handle it yourselves and I’ll randomly quiz you to see if you did it right.” Neither Jon nor I have experience training other people, so we don’t really know how to go about training each other aside from the basic things we’ve already gone over. Is this a normal way to go about cross-training? Am I somehow wrong to expect more structure or intentionality out of this process? How can I approach Cersei about my concerns without sounding combative or obstructive?
An alarming amount of workplace “training” happens without any real structure or method, and people without any training in training others are asked to train people all the time. The belief is often that if you know how to do task X, you can show someone else how to do task X. And frankly, a lot of the time that’s true! You might not do it in the most efficient or ideal way, but most of the time people muddle through.
But that doesn’t mean Cercei is handling this well. If she wants to be involved to the point of giving you pop quizzes, she should also be involved earlier on — talking with each of you about what to train the other in, and how thoroughly, and what having done it successfully will look like. For example, if you’re showing Jon how to send email newsletters, do you just need to show him the basic mechanics of creating and sending a newsletter in the CRM software, or do you also need to equip him to troubleshoot, create new design templates, follow your boss’s content preferences, and know the best days of the week to send them out? There’s a huge range of stuff that she could mean by cross-training.
Since the current system isn’t working, why not tell Cersei that you and Jon feel you’ve reached the limits of your training abilities and need some help? At a minimum, sitting down together to create a more comprehensive list of what each person needs to learn should help.
From there, I don’t think the quizzes are punitive per se; they can be a decent way to suss out what’s been learned and what spots might need more attention. But she’s got to put in the work to support the process on the front-end first.
(You also probably need all this stuff documented, since someone who learns something in July and doesn’t use it until November is going to need something written down to consult.)
2. I have to go take a random drug test during quarantine
I guess this is less of a question than just blowing off steam. I work as a third party contractor for a government agency. It’s one of those situations where my paycheck comes from the contracting company, but I work at the agency location and honestly see my contracting “supervisor” maybe twice a year.
I got an email this morning from the contracting company’s HR telling me that I was selected for a random drug screening and that I have until 3:00 tomorrow to go to a lab location to complete the screen. I haven’t left my house since mid March except for walks, our office is currently closed. I’ll have to use public transportation to get to the nearest lab. It seems crazy to me that random testing wasn’t suspended during a global pandemic. I politely but firmly pushed back to both my “supervisor” at the contracting company and directly with HR. The response from both was basically “random screenings are policy, wear a mask.”
Can I get a reality check? I’m not the crazy one, right?
(Yes, I am planning on doing the screen tomorrow. I do not want to be fired).
You are not the crazy one. Your company sucks both for violating your privacy (what you do in the privacy of your own home on your own time isn’t any of their business to begin with — unless you are in a safety-sensitive position, in which case they should be using far more effective performance testing anyway, which would check if you’re impaired for any reason, not just finding drug use from a week ago) and for demanding that you risk your health for this performative concern about safety in the middle of a pandemic.
Performance testing = computer-assisted tests that measure things like hand-eye coordination and response time, designed to catch multiple types of impairment (including legal ones, like sleepiness or alcohol). Used by NASA on astronauts and test pilots, and in other cases where safety matters more than drug testing theater.
3. Can you interview with a second company when an employer flies you out to interview?
I’ve got a question for you about something my boyfriend did when job searching. About two years ago, we were getting ready to move 12 hours away so I could start grad school. He scheduled an interview with one company in our new location and they offered to pay for flights, hotel, and rental car. Since he was going to be in the area, he scheduled another interview for the time he was going to be in town.
Well, both companies offered him a job, but Company A — who paid for travel — had a ridiculously bad offer. The pay was well below market rate and the benefits and the hours were bad as well. Company B paid significantly more and offered better benefits. It was really a no brainer who to go with. He waited a bit after thinking it over — company A’s name carries weight — and ultimately went with Company B. Company A seemed upset that he didn’t accept the offer. (If I remember correctly, my boyfriend tried to negotiate with them and it still didn’t compare to Company B.) They flat out asked if he interviewed for another position while there for their interview and seemed quite upset that he did. Was he wrong for scheduling more than one interview on this trip and having company A pay for travel when he didn’t ultimately go with them?
It’s not uncommon for people to try to line up more than one interview on a trip to a city they hope to move to, even when one of the companies is paying the travel expenses. As long as his interview with Company B didn’t add any expenses for Company A, he didn’t do anything wrong. My answer would be different if he’d tacked on an extra day for the interview at A’s expense, or if he was less available to A during his trip because of B’s demands on his time, but it doesn’t sound like that happened.
That said, in general it’s wise to be discreet when you do this. Companies understandably don’t want to feel like they’re facilitating some other employer’s interview schedule, so typically you’d keep it to yourself if you were scheduling multiple interviews during a trip they were paying for. But unless the company that flew you out books up all your time while you’re there, you’re free to go to a movie, have dinner with a local friend, or, yes, meet with other employers.
It sounds like Company A was just taken aback that your boyfriend turned down their offer and was looking for an explanation other than their below-market pay and benefits.
4. My manager told me I don’t seem passionate about my work anymore
My company performed their mid-year performance reviews as scheduled over the last month. We’re all remote during the pandemic and as far as I know, my company is doing alright and no one has been laid off. My mental health has been really suffering due to the endless global situations, a death in the family, and a general predisposition to depression and anxiety.
During these past few months, the responsibilities of my role have been expanded and I have more to do. I have been staying on top of this new work on top of my existing workload. During my performance review, my manager told me he was impressed with how I handled these new tasks but that he wasn’t seeing my passion or the work anymore. In all honesty, I don’t think I have ever been passionate about my work. I think what he’s responding to is that I’ve been going through a hard time lately. I asked for concrete examples I could work on. He said he didn’t have any, but still reflected this lack of passion in one of the scores on my review.
I’m feeling extremely frustrated and demoralized. It literally is taking all of my energy right now to do my work every day, leaving very little left for me to take care of myself after 5. I don’t have the energy to fake enthusiasm on top of that, and I don’t think that’s an appropriate ask during a pandemic. Am I overreacting? I feel like I should just be thankful to have a job that isn’t disrupted by everything going on, but I’m genuinely pretty hurt.
Nah, that’s messed up. He should come up with concrete examples of how this is affecting your work or it doesn’t belong on a review. To be clear, I’m not saying hard-to-define things never belong on a review; they often do. I’m saying that managers need to do the work of figuring out what the impact really is and articulating that.
It might be worth going back to him and saying, “I’ve thought a lot about your feedback in my review. I think what you’re seeing is my response to the stress of the pandemic, plus a death in the family and some medical issues I’m dealing with. I don’t think that belongs in my review, particularly in light of the good work I’ve continued to do and especially if there aren’t specific impacts on my work, and I’d like to ask you to reconsider including it in my scores.”
5. How to professionally answer work calls on a personal cell
I was hoping you could help clarify a professional way to answer your personal cell phone while teleworking during the pandemic. I generally just answer with “hello” but I’ve noticed a lot of coworkers will answer with a variation of “This is Fergus.” I don’t realy like answering my phone with my name, especially with unknown numbers, because I don’t want to provide them details to try to sell me stuff or scam me. Is “Hello” unprofessional? Should I suck it up since my personal phone is being used in a business capacity at the moment? How do I answer my phone?
“This is Fergus” is generally considered more professional than “hello.” Even though this is your personal phone, if it’s the main number you’re using for work calls right now, during work hours I’d answer it as if you’re getting a work call (especially if some of those calls are from clients and not just coworkers). But if you want, you could set up a Google voice number for work calls and set it to ring to your home phone, but adjust your settings to alert you when a call is coming in on that number.
That said (and I know people will disagree with me on this), I’m not convinced that people who want to scam you or sell you things will gain a significant advantage by knowing your name — you’re still going to figure out what they’re doing quickly and can cut off the call (assuming you have a reasonable amount of savviness, which I imagine you do).
boss gives us pop quizzes, random drug tests during quarantine, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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