It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. Should I try to take my old coworker’s job?
I quit my job last February. A coworker was promoted to my position. She was totally unprepared and unqualified, and I have been secretly helping her ever since. She contacts me almost daily with questions and crises.
Now I desperately need a job, and wonder if I should try to get my old job back. The boss is happy with Shanna, but has no clue that I am still “training” her. I have all the emails to prove it, but that would sabotage Shanna’s career. What should I do?
Trying to take someone’s job from them would be a real dick move! Don’t do it.
You can certainly stop helping Shanna — explain to her that you no longer have the time to keep helping and at this point she should be able to do the job on her own — but you can’t secretly try to sabotage her.
At most, you could say something to your old boss like, “Shanna is still contacting me for help on a lot of things and I’m looking for work, which made me wonder if there might be space for a role for me to help with some of my old projects, or even something else.” You’d be proposing coming back, but not taking Shanna’s job to do it.
2. Are cotton clothes less professional?
I’m a mid-40s female professional in the biotech industry. Many years ago, I made the personal decision to avoid buying synthetic fabrics due to the large environmental impact and often ethically questionable workplace practices that synthetics and fast-fashion have. The prevents me from buying most items at popular fast-fashion places like Zara and H&M, and even more traditional places like Ann Taylor or White House Black Market, where the majority of the fabrics are synthetic. I inspect the tags on everything I buy and stick to a few retailers I know. I find myself buying a lot of items made from cotton since it’s a natural fiber. Since I’m also committed to buying from environmentally responsible and sweat-shop free businesses, they often come with a high price tag, but also with the bonus that they are well-made and are long-lasting.
One day I was talking with a European colleague about where we shop and she looked at me and said, “I have never worn a t-shirt in my life,” I think implying that my tops look like t-shirts because they are made of cotton. I noticed that she was wearing head-to-toe polyester, which made me think about the microplastics that pollute the ocean every time polyester is washed and the environmental sludge and throw-away culture that comes out of the manufacturing of fast-fashion. I feel like the clothing I choose usually looks cute and classic, not very trendy, but still flattering. Did my personal environment and ethical choices force me to wear clothing that looks too casual?
It’s true that some cotton tops can read as less professional and more t-shirt-ish. Not all of them — there are lots of professional-looking cotton tops (hello, cotton button-downs!). But our norms around profession dress do include a weird convention where the same top can look less professional in cotton than in synthetic fabrics. It depends on the top, and it depends on the specifics of the fabric — like whether it’s t-shirt fabric or something more structured or with a different drape. It also depends on the office — in many offices this would be a total non-issue, while in others it might matter more. (And as for why this is even a thing, it’s one of those inexplicable conventions that has its roots in something other than logic. My guess is it’s probably very old and rooted in the fact that cotton used to cost less.)
In any case, if your shirts aren’t cut like t-shirts and don’t drape like t-shirts, I think you’re fine.
3. Did I ruin an offer by asking for a three-month delay in my start date?
Last week, my dream company told me they would want to extend me an offer after two rounds of interviews which took place before the Covid-19 outbreak. The interviews took place in February and March, but the company had a hiring freeze in March, and told me they had to pause my application and hoped to pick it up as soon as they could. Last week, they emailed saying that the hiring has resumed and they wanted to give me an offer if I’m still interested. I emailed back saying of course I would be interested. However, I asked if I could start three months later than the start date proposed in the original job post because of Covid-19 reasons and a few things that got delayed in my current job. They said they would look into it.
A few days passed and yesterday I saw that they took down the original job post and posted a new one with slight changes (adding a term in the job title and proposed start date). Is it a sign that they already changed their mind about hiring me?
It’s likely a sign that they don’t want to wait three months for someone to start — especially since they’ve already been waiting since March. If you’d want the job even if you’d need to start it on their proposed start date, I’d contact them right now, say you’ve been able to move some things around and are available when they proposed, and ask if they’d still like to move forward. Otherwise, yeah, it looks likely that you might miss out on the job because of the extra time you’re asking for.
For what it’s worth, this isn’t how they should have handled it. If they couldn’t accommodate the extra three months, they should have told you that and given you a chance to decide if that worked for you or not. Just re-advertising while leaving you hanging isn’t great. (That said, asking for an extra three months might not have been great either, although it depends on the job. There are some jobs that would happily accommodate that — especially more senior and more skilled jobs — and others where just asking would come across strangely.)
4. Can I ask questions before coming back from a leave of absence?
When I had my annual review at the end of 2019, my boss (executive director of a small nonprofit) and I discussed the likelihood of, at the end of 2020, me receiving a title bump from, say, development specialist to director of development (a role that doesn’t currently exist at our organization). She told me to remind her mid-year so she could plan for this. She was also open about the fact that she was planning on retiring at the end of 2020, which I was looking forward to, since she’s been an okay-but-not-amazing boss.
Then 2020 happened. My boss postponed her retirement plans indefinitely to deal with seeing the organization through the pandemic. Around April-May, I was also diagnosed with a serious health problem requiring an extended period away from work for treatment. At the beginning of June, I started a six-month leave of absence to deal with my health stuff, and I didn’t ask my boss about whether my planned title bump was still a possibility before I left, which was probably an error on my part.
At this point, I’m not 100% sure I actually want to go back to this job, but I might be swayed depending on 1) whether my boss has any sort of new timeline for her retirement in mind and 2) whether my title bump is still in the pipeline for 2021. (I would totally understand if it’s not, given everything that’s happened, but I don’t want to assume that either!) How do I go about asking my boss either of these things in a reasonable way? Obviously I can’t say “I’m only coming back if you’re leaving in the near future,” but is there a less horrible-sounding way of getting that information? And if she tells me that she’s not leaving any time soon, or that my title bump isn’t in the cards after all, and then I decide not to return, won’t my reasons why be sort of obvious?
At some point later on in your leave of absence, ask to set up a phone call about your return. Then, on the call, discuss some of the logistics — and as part of that, you can say, “Obviously the pandemic and my leave of absence have both gotten in the way of moving me to the director of development position we’d discussed. Does that still look like something we can do at the end of this year, or is it more likely something we’d take up next year?” Additionally, as you’re talking, you can say in a chatty way, “I know you’d been planning to move on at the end of the year, and the pandemic disrupted that. Do you have a new timeline you’re planning on?” This is something you could easily be asking out of curiosity; it’s not going to be obvious that your return hinges on her answer (especially if your tone is just chatty/friendly).
The longer you wait to have this conversation, the more likely she’ll have an answer about her timeline, so I’d wait at least another month or so.
If you ultimately decide not to return, you can say it’s health-related or related to changes from the weirdness of this year or another opportunity dropped in your lap, etc. It shouldn’t look like a response to whatever answers you hear, assuming it doesn’t happen immediately afterwards.
5. Should I tell a new advisor about my family health situation?
I graduated from college in May and am about to start a PhD program across the country in a famously competitive STEM field. Due to a variety of circumstances, I only have a few living relatives: my parents, a sibling, a grandmother, and an uncle. My mother, grandmother, and uncle are all in poor health and unlikely to make it to the time I finish grad school.
However … I know many people are probably in a similar situation with the pandemic. And I had an experience as an undergrad where I lost a close friend in an accident, asked for that afternoon off when I found out, and my manager said since he wasn’t a blood relative or a student at my university, I couldn’t let it affect my work since “loss is just part of adult life.” Some people in academia have even said they assume students’ grandparents’ deaths are excuses! Should I let my advisor know about my family ahead of time so he knows I’m not fabricating? Or will it make it seem like I have one foot out the door or am not committed or “adult” enough? I won’t necessarily be asking for lots of time off if something happens, just the understanding that I may need a day or two, especially since travel is dangerous for the foreseeable future. What are the actual professional norms here?
What on earth — you’re only allowed to mourn blood relatives and other students?! (I’m hoping the “other students” was because they’d have independent verification of that, because otherwise that’s a bizarre addition.) No relatives by marriage? No close friends? No spouses? (I’m guessing it wasn’t an actual rule, but just him speaking off the cuff, but still — absurd.) That manager was an ass and not representative of what you should expect to find in any decent workplace.
That said, it wouldn’t hurt to inform your advisor of your situation early on — not because you won’t be believed otherwise, but because it’s something that could come up and it won’t hurt to have proactively explained things at the start.
should I try to steal my old coworker’s job, are cotton clothes less professional, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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