It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. Is it OK to ask a coworker to swap pants with me?
During college I enrolled in a program that we call Junior Enterprise, where the students have to, on their own, maintain a company. It is an awesome experience because we have the daily problems of a small company. We need to look for projects in the area that we are graduating in to pay for the expenses of the company.
When I was a senior member of our Junior Enterprise, I had an appointment with a teacher who we wanted to sponsor one of our projects. Around 30 minutes before the meeting, my pants ripped in the knee, very visibly. I asked an “intern” of the company who was my size to change pants with me, and she did it willingly. (We were both students in the same course, although not close friends.)
Would it be okay to ask a colleague at work if I were in the same situation with an important client coming in? I have never made up my mind if it was the correct choice or not.
I think you could mayyyybe ask a peer-level colleague if you had a pretty good friendship — but I would not ask an intern, because interns will feel obligated to say yes … and no one should feel compelled to literally give you the clothes off their back (well, legs).
The key with a request like this is you should only ask if you know the person would be comfortable saying no. By definition, that rules out interns for a lot of personal favors because of the power dynamic. There’s too much chance they wouldn’t really want to do it but would feel obligated to say yes anyway.
(That said, this might not have applied to your “intern” in the school program if you basically felt like peers.)
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to write one of my favorite headlines ever.
2. Should I tell the principal that teachers at my child’s school are not social distancing?
I normally very much believe that what teachers do on their own time is their own business, short of breaking the law. However. Many teachers from my child’s school live in our neighborhood, including one who lives on our block, and many of them are in their 20s/early 30s. During the Covid shut-down and our state’s phased re-opening, we’ve observed on many occasions that they are not social distancing (we live in a dense, walkable neighborhood, so it is easy to see what everyone else is doing). The most egregious example was a backyard party with ~10 adults sitting in a circle, chairs touching, and no masks. They socialize at restaurants, bars (again, no problem normally, big problem during Covid), unmasked gatherings, etc.
I find this infuriating on many levels, but I’m not sure whether I should say something to the principal or the district. I don’t want to get the teachers in trouble, and they could easily figure out which teachers live in our neighborhood. Cases in our state are up, so schools will start online and they are not putting other school staff at immediate risk, but at some point everyone will go back to school. It is also frustrating to hear these teachers say that going back to school is unsafe while they are putting themselves at risk, especially when many families have been staying home and isolating to try and ensure that it is safe for students and teachers to go back to school. Do I say something now, wait until schools reopen, or stay quiet?
Ugh. I hate how much teachers get policed for their outside-of-work behavior, but this is behavior that could end up killing people. Still, though, until in-person classes are happening, I don’t see grounds for you to say anything. Teachers shouldn’t be held to a higher bar than anyone else if their classes are virtual. (I agree with you about the hypocrisy if these teachers are among those saying returning to school is unsafe — although they may not be — but that in itself isn’t grounds for alerting their employer.)
If you’re still seeing it once schools resume in-person, then I think your question for the principal is what outside-of-work precautions they’re asking teachers to take, if any, and then you go from there. The reality, though, is that most employers aren’t policing their employees’ out-of-work behavior, and this is one time when it likely won’t be different for teachers (and you’ve got to make decisions for your family accordingly).
3. Can I get any maternity leave?
I work for a small nonprofit of less than 10 full-time employees. I have been with them for just under two years and am pregnant.
I knew going into the job that paid maternity leave was not a benefit, but I incorrectly assumed that I would always have 12 weeks unpaid, it would just be a matter of if I could afford it. But a quick and confusing google search seems to be saying that 12 weeks unpaid is not something a nonprofit with a small number of employees has to do. Further complicating matters is that my entire team works remotely, so I don’t know what state to go by, the one I live in or the one our address is based out of?
Am I totally screwed when it comes to anything I am entitled to? And if so, is it possible to try to negotiate something with my boss, either paid or unpaid?
It’s not about being a nonprofit; it’s about having fewer than 50 employees. The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) gives you up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave while protecting your job, but it only applies to employers with 50 or more employees (and it does include nonprofits if they’re over that size threshold). More details here.
That’s a federal law that covers the whole country, but it’s possible your state has additional protections, and they could kick in at a lower number of employees. If so, it’s the laws of the state you’re working in that would govern, not the state where the company is based.
If none of this covers you, then yeah, you’d be looking at trying to negotiate something with your employer without being able to point to the law — but people do this successfully all the time! You have a better chance of negotiating unpaid leave than paid, of course, but a good employer will be very willing to work out some sort of maternity leave for you (and may already have a precedent they’ve used in the past).
4. I never received any acknowledgment after I turned down a job offer
I was in a job I didn’t like, found a new one and left but it was worse, contacted my old manager to say “my bad,” and they allowed me to come back as a maternity cover.
I had also been applying to jobs, and I recently go an offer from one that was more in line with the work I want to be doing. They asked that I hand in my notice ASAP (and after being back at my old role less than a week so I had asked for an extension on that, but they didn’t like that), and were offering less money than I was making, along with some other issues, so I turned down the role.
Is it normal to not receive any confirmation of my turning down the offer? I did even send a follow-up email to ask if they’d received my initial very thankful and gracious rejection of the offer email, but I’ve still heard nothing back.
It’s more common than it should be. They might think the conversation has been completed — they made you an offer and you’ve turned it down — but they should reply so you know the message was received, especially when you checked back with them. Otherwise you have to worry there’s a chance they didn’t get it and are thinking you’re rude for never getting back to them. They likely would have circled back with you by this point if they hadn’t heard anything, so it’s fine to just leave it here.
5. Following up on a job that I was invited to apply for
I am a director in the nonprofit/government field. I received a call back in March from the executive director of an organization in my field letting me know they are retiring this summer and, while they’re not involved with the decision making to fill the position, they felt strongly that I should apply. So I did. The new position would be the same level I’m at now, just for a larger org with multiple locations instead of one. It’s what I’ve wanted to do, and where I’ve wanted to be since I started (there!) in this field.
Then lockdown hit and I haven’t heard anything from the board responsible for hiring. I reached out once in May to say that I’m still interested. Crickets.
So now I’m on the fence about reaching out to the person who initially contacted me. I don’t want to be a nuisance (when people bug me repeatedly about open positions it gets irritating), but by the same token, I want to know if they’re still retiring, if the position is still open, what the timeframe is, etc.
She reached out to you specifically, so it’s completely fine to contact her now and let her know you did apply but haven’t heard anything. Add that you realize things may be on hold or significantly slowed down due to Covid, and say you wondered if she can share whehther they’re still actively hiring for the role.
If you’d just applied on your own and didn’t have any connection to the organization, that would be too much — but you used to work there and were invited to apply personally. You have lots of standing to ask about an update!
is it OK to ask a coworker to swap pants, teachers at my child’s school aren’t social distancing, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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