It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. Grad student sends me rude emails
A grad student I manage writes rude emails. He will send three emails in 15 minutes, and then respond rudely when I answer the first one, as I haven’t gotten around to the other two or hadn’t seen them in my inbox yet. He’ll respond quoting his previous emails I haven’t had time to look at yet. Or if I responded, he will ignore the answer and resend it, again quoting himself. Every email is condescending and liable to ramble. He will tell me to do things quite often, which is also odd to me.
I asked another person to look at our email conversations, and they agreed that they’re widely rude. A lot of his emails, however, contain misspellings and odd grammar so I’m thinking it might be a lack of comfort with the nuances of the English language? On the other hand, I was warned before I started that he was a difficult personality to work with, and I think that might be coloring my perception as we have never met in person.
Should I talk to him about this? If so what’s the best way to explain that some of his email habits could be considered rude when he graduates in three years? (If they even are. Maybe I’m too picky?)
It doesn’t sound like you’re being too picky. What you’ve described is rude, or at the very least annoying. Someone else reviewed the emails and also agreed; I don’t think you need to keep second-guessing yourself!
But rather than getting into a whole explanation of why he’s coming across rudely, why not just tell him, clearly and matter-of-factly what you’d like him to do differently? (That will also help if the problem is his English skills.) For example, you could say, “Please save up your questions for a single email rather than sending multiple emails in quick succession. Or, if you can’t avoid that, please wait for me to to finish responding to each email rather that repeating your questions after I’ve only had a chance to respond to one of them.” When he ignores an answer, you could respond, “I answered this previously; please see the email I sent you this morning.”
If he inappropriately instructs you do things, the way to respond depends on exactly what he’s doing, but this post and this post lay out some options that might work.
You manage him so you have authority here. Use it by calmly and directly telling him what you want to see him doing differently.
2. Getting out of a team celebration during COVID
I work at a university, in an area of the country that has seen a huge decline in COVID cases for the past several weeks. The college has been so good to our department during the COVID crisis: we have all kept our hours and pay, have been able to work from home with a lot of flexibility, and overall we’ve actually seen an increase in productivity these past few months. Additionally, independent of COVID, our specific area has increased revenue to the university by nearly 40% in the past fiscal year.
Now, my boss’s boss, a top executive/VP, would like to have a “socially distant celebration” later this month with the departments he oversees to congratulate us for the increase in revenue. We have been told this will be an outdoor, casual, socially distant lunch.
A few of us at the “lower levels” have expressed discomfort about attending and brought this to our director, who in turn brought this to her boss, the VP. She told us she conveyed our discomfort, but the VP is still insisting on the celebration. We even sent along other ideas like getting a swap bag from the university or expensing our own lunches for a remote luncheon on Zoom (so we could order from our own homes). He is of an older generation, and my guess is that he feels that we may not feel “appreciated enough” in a remote celebration, or that just sending everyone a “swag bag” of collegiate wear is a cheap way out of celebrating the important milestones in our office.
However, it doesn’t really seem optional for us to attend, more like mandatory — especially since we have communicated our discomfort and the VP is still pushing the event anyway. I am just starting to see my own family again and am not comfortable in sharing food with tens of other people whom I have no need to see in-person. I know others in the department feel the same way. Is it rude for me to just blow the event off, or should I attend and just, like, stand far away in order to show thanks? I think the VP would be upset if no one came … but it seems like a stupid risk to take when there are a variety of other options to celebrate that would make everyone more comfortable.
Don’t attend an event that you don’t feel safe attending. Outside events aren’t risk-free (here’s a backyard event that’s become notorious here in the D.C. area after a number of guests contracted the virus).
Has the VP asked for RSVPs? If so, RSVP that you appreciate the invitation but don’t feel comfortable attending events right now because of the pandemic so will need to decline. If there’s no mechanism for RSVPs, you can relay that same message though your boss, or directly to the VP by email if that feels appropriate for the relationship. Or a group of you can explain this to your boss and ask her to relay it. That has the benefit of presenting a more united front and carrying more weight. (It also has the potential to make it more of A Thing, but frankly it should be A Thing. Employees’ health concerns should be respected, especially when something is so clearly non-essential and especially when it’s intended to thank/reward you.)
I know you’re concerned this isn’t really optional, but given what’s at stake here, you should proceed as if of course it’s optional — which sometimes can jar people into realizing how weird it would be if they required it.
3. Employers requiring a photo when you apply for a job
I have been reading your blog on and off for years now, enough to know that including a headshot is common in some countries and I’ve always found it kind of weird. Well, now I find myself as a job seeker in the Los Angeles area and every other job post on Craigslist is asking for a photo along with a resume! I have been browsing job posts on Craigslist (in the same area) for 5+ years off and on, depending on how happy I am at work, and have never noticed this before.
Do you think this is a weird, invasive thing employers/ recruiters are trying to get away with during these desperate times for job seekers? I noticed in only one (of about eight) job post they mentioned there would be no in-person interviews and the work was remote so I can kind of understand wanting a photo in this case but still … Is this as weird as I think it is?
Yes, this is weird. While it’s true that submitting a photo with your job application is common in some countries, it’s not normal in the U.S.
With an exception of a small number of fields like acting and modeling, there’s no reason an employer needs to know what you look like at the application stage (for that matter, it’s rarely necessary at any stage, although it usually happens because you eventually meet in-person). Asking for a photo implies it will factor into their consideration of your candidacy, and it opens the door to several different types of illegal discrimination (not only racial discrimination, but some jurisdictions prohibit making employment decisions on the basis of appearance as well).
Maybe they figure it’s helpful to put a face to a name, especially if they’re not doing in-person interviews, but that’s trumped by the potential discrimination issues and the fact that it will weird candidates out because it seems so skeevy.
4. Do I have to repay my employer for a refund on a reimbursed expense?
I have somewhat of a moral question about expense reports. My company is great about paying for classes you take in relation to your job. I submitted an expense report for a class and it should pay out this upcoming paycheck. The class originally included a $120 “technology fee” for being an online class, which I paid and submitted for reimbursement. But because of COVID, I just received notice that they’re waiving the fee this quarter and I’ll be refunded. What obligation to I have to my employer to repay that? They approved the cost because I had the receipt to back I up, but should I let them know I got the money back?
If it’s relevant, my company has a $100 a quarter wellness reimbursement that my manager has suggested I just submit a friend’s receipts for just to “not miss out on free money” so I’m sure she’s going to think I’m crazy if I tell her about this.
You should repay that — or at least alert them to the situation and ask how you should handle it. Otherwise you’re accepting money from your employer under false pretenses. If they don’t care, let them tell you that; don’t decide for them.
Also, your manager suggested you submit a friend’s receipts as your own? Your manager has a serious ethics deficit, and I would not use her as your model! Ideally you’d direct the question about how to handle the refund to someone who’s not her, but if you have to go through her and she again tells you not to miss out on free money, you could say, “I don’t feel right about that, since it’s not my money.”
5. Will applying for a bunch of positions earlier hurt me now?
I am considering applying for a position for a local public sector organization. About six years ago, I believe I committed a sin in applying. The department had been entirely re-created to make workers in-house employees rather than contracted through a different company. So there were five different job titles posted in the department (everything but the director, who had just started and created these job descriptions), all slightly different in terms of responsibilities and pay grades. My sin: I applied for all of them. I know now that this made me seem desperate (and, to be honest, I kind of was). Naturally I was not called back for any of them.
Might I have been fully blacklisted? Rumor has it the department’s director is changing jobs to another organization, and so either the director position (which I do not feel qualified for) or perhaps one of the other positions beneath the director may become available (if they promote from within). Should I apply, or even bother? Definitely only one application! For what it’s worth, I have spent the last six years still in the industry and completed a relevant bachelor’s degree, so I feel that my worth/hire-ability has also increased.
Go ahead and apply!
It’s really not a big deal that you applied for all five positions last time. If you were obviously not the right match for some of them, it did probably make you look like you were taking a scattershot approach / weren’t really invested in any of them / didn’t pay attention to what you were applying for. That could have taken you out of the running at the time, but it’s not the kind of thing people get blacklisted over. If you did that over and over — like if in the last six years you’d applied dozens of times and obviously weren’t paying attention to how qualified you were for any given role — that could potentially mean you’d be taken less seriously now. But it’s highly unlikely that one time six years ago is on anyone’s radar at all.
And to be clear, if you were a plausible candidate for all five roles last time, then you didn’t even do anything wrong then. It’s still better to narrow down your interest, especially when the jobs are all on the same team, but it’s not the kind of thing people will care much about.
grad student sends rude emails, photos with job applications, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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