It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. My boss keeps telling people I’ve had COVID
I contracted “mild” COVID earlier this year, and was significantly unwell — thankfully, not badly enough to be admitted to the hospital. For around a week, I was pretty much unconscious, and for some time after that I was able to do only a minimum of work. Months later, I am still not back at full health and tire easily, but I have managed my full workload for many weeks.
Fortunately, the worst period fell during a naturally quiet phase at work, particularly since the agencies we do most work with were officially locked down. Most of my external contacts didn’t even notice I was gone. My work has also been entirely remote throughout the Plague Times, with full flexibility for caring responsibilities, etc.
I haven’t kept my illness a secret in my personal life: on the contrary, I have felt an obligation to talk candidly with friends and family about my experience to counter the messages of “just like the flu” or “it’s only mild for most people” or “young people don’t get COVID.” My boss and I have a good relationship and many friends in common, so we have discussed it a few times and it’s no internal secret either.
But she has started telling our external contacts that I’ve had COVID and am better, and it rubs me the wrong way. I can’t even put my finger on the reason I don’t like it, but it’s partly because it’s not her news to tell, and partly because what she’s saying is not quite accurate. Am I being precious, or is this off? If it’s off, given how great she has been about the pandemic in general, how can I politely ask her to quit it?
You’re not being precious. She shouldn’t be sharing your medical info without your permission, and that’s before we even get into the fact that she’s framing it inaccurately. She probably doesn’t intend to violate your privacy and just thinks of it as interesting news — but it’s not hers to share.
Since you have a good relationship, be direct with her. You could say, “Could I ask that you not share with people that I’ve had COVID? I’m not trying to hide it, but I’d rather not have my medical info shared around.” If she seems surprised, you could say, “Mainly I don’t want medical info shared without my okay, but I also worry about people who don’t hear it from me getting the impression that it wasn’t a big deal. I’m still not fully recovered and I don’t want to reinforce the way some people think it’s like the flu.”
2. My employee apologizes all the time
We recently hired a new employee for a front desk position. We hired her knowing she doesn’t have the technical knowledge for our field, but she had great customer service. Her training was interrupted by Covid, but overall I am happy with her progress and have tried to communicate this to her.
One thing I have noticed is that she apologizes a lot. And while I appreciate an apology for a mistake, she often apologizes for her lack of knowledge or for asking questions. I want her asking questions, because I know she is still learning. We are a small government department that covers lots of things, so there are lots of little things to learn. Another example was she made an error with a costumer that was easily fixed. She apologized multiple times to the customer, where I felt one would have been sufficient. As her manager, should I address this? If so, how best? I definitely feel she needs to build confidence, but I also wonder if it is a habit that should be broken.
Yes, address it — especially the multiple apologies to customers, because that will annoy people and/or undermine their confidence in her.
I think from your email that you’re a woman, so one way to address is it to point out that women in particular tend to over-apologize and that it can make them seem less confident and less authoritative than men, and tell her you’d like her to work on not apologizing for questions or routine work hiccups. About the questions in particular, you could say, “Asking questions is a good thing! When you apologize, it makes me worry that you’re hesitant to ask other questions, and that would worry me.” It might help to suggest language she could use instead (for example, “that makes sense and I’ll do it that way going forward” or even just “got it, I’ll make that correction”).
Excessive apologizing tends to be an ingrained habit, so don’t expect that it will stop overnight — but as it recurs, try saying, “This is what we were talking about — no apology necessary. Now, let’s tackle how to do this.”
3. My boss accidentally screen-shared a message about a coworker’s performance problems
I work on a sales team. A coworker, “Sheryl,” joined our team late last year, with a long and successful sales career behind her. On our team, she has been less successful. She has made passing remarks to me that indicate that she knows her job could be in jeopardy.
We are all working from home due to Covid. On a team call recently, our boss was sharing his screen to show us something. Once he finished showing it to us, he did not stop sharing even as the conversation shifted to other topics. An instant message from my boss’s boss popped up: “Are we moving forward with a PIP for Sheryl?”
My boss didn’t seem to realize he was still sharing his screen (his camera was also on) and pondered for a moment before responding in IM that he was on a team call and would call later. He then minimized the messages.
I have no idea who else saw this. Should I say anything to anyone about this? Give my boss an FYI that the team, including Sheryl, may have seen it? I’m pretty sure that I shouldn’t say anything to Sheryl, as she already knows her job may be in trouble, and will know soon enough if she is out on a PIP. Am I making too big a deal about this?
You don’t need to say or do anything. But if you have a good relationship with your boss, it would be a kindness to let him know, so that he knows to be more careful with screen-sharing in the future. You don’t need to make a huge deal out of it — just tell him privately that you wanted to give him a heads-up in case he wants to check his settings to keep it from happening again.
Unless you’re very close friends with Sheryl (like outside-of-work close), this isn’t something you should alert her to. It’s a private matter between her and your boss, despite the awkward slip-up, and you shouldn’t get involved (and there’s a risk of causing drama if you do).
4. My company wants me to connect my personal Facebook account to our business page
I am in a bind. We want to link a social media service to our Facebook business account. The problem is, we don’t have a shared Facebook personal profile to connect – we used to, but we lost access. (I used to use this shared account.) My coworkers have the business account to tied to their personal accounts.
I REALLY don’t want to connect this company page to my personal account. I prefer to keep my professional life and social life separate as much as possible. Should I bite the bullet and just do it? I’m fearful this will open a can of worms where they will assume I will have the responsibility to connect future apps that require a Facebook connection.
No one else is offering to submit their passwords to connect to this social media service (and why would they?). For whatever reason, even though I’m not the social media manager (it is managed via a third party and a couple of my coworkers), they want ME to hook this up.
If you’re not the one managing the page, why on earth are they asking you to set it up? You should push back on that basis alone.
But more generally speaking, Facebook is set up strangely in this regard; they require personal accounts to manage business accounts, and their rules prohibit creating secondary personal accounts to do it — which puts people in exactly the bind you’re in. Ideally you’d just create a generic Facebook account (perhaps using a different name than your real one) and use it to connect to/manage the business page, but if they catch you they can suspend any of the accounts involved.
So another option is to just say, “I have massive firewalls around all my personal social media, and it’s been drilled into me never to compromise that. So I can’t be the one to do this. Sorry I can’t help!” Whether or not that’ll fly depends on your office — but if you’re not even involved in managing social media, it should.
5. Asking for a job I’d earlier turned down
After months of searching for my first full-time job, I received two job offers almost simultaneously in mid-March. I took Job A and turned down Job B, and was set to start when a quarantine order was issued for my area. Needless to say, I haven’t actually started Job A apart from a day’s worth of remote training, and have been on unemployment benefits since. Today, I had a call with my boss at Job A where they let me know that because of decreased revenue, my once-temporary furlough is now indefinite. I’m still on the books, but they recommended I start looking for other opportunities since they can’t promise they’ll ever be able to bring me back.
I know Job B is still hiring, because they’re reissuing the same job posting every month as part of their team’s ongoing expansion. I want to re-apply but I’m not sure how to approach it. I did really like Job B, and would have been happy to take it if I hadn’t gotten a unique opportunity with Job A, but to be completely honest I am only asking for this job again because I can’t do Job A. I’m not sure that I wouldn’t quit in six months if Job A asked me back. But I like the work at Job B, there’s no guarantee I’ll ever be asked back to Job A, and my benefits are shrinking significantly soon — all good reasons to revisit this opportunity.
You’ve advised before that hiring managers will probably be skeptical of someone asking for a job that they previously turned down, but has that changed in the current climate? How should I approach this request, and how can I be convincing in a way that’s still truthful about my situation?
It’s true they’re likely to be skeptical if you can’t explain what changed your mind — but that’s not the case here! Go ahead and contact them and be up-front. Say something like, “When you offered me the job back in March, I’d just received another offer. It was a hard decision but I ultimately went with the other offer because of ___. Then, of course, Covid struck, and I never was able to start the other position as a result. I see you’re still hiring for the role and I’d love to throw my hat back in the ring if you’d be open to that.”
Just be judicious about the reason you use to fill in that blank. It needs to be something that doesn’t sound like you’re only coming back to them out of desperation (so it shouldn’t sound like you’d be unhappy with the work or other key elements of the job).
my boss keeps telling people I’ve had COVID, employee apologizes all the time, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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