It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. My voice sounds so young that callers think I’m a kid
I have to answer external phone calls in my job, but I have a really young-sounding voice and often customers ask if they can speak to my mum. When I say I’m an employee here and ask if I can help, sometimes they don’t believe me. Some even ask why I’m not at school. Occasionally they can get quite rude. I’m 39 years old.
When it happens to me at home, if it’s a telemarketer I can have a bit of fun with them and say my mum doesn’t live here, and no my dad doesn’t live here either. When they ask for the homeowner, I say, “oh yes, that’s me,” at which point they hang up.
Obviously I can’t do this at work. Nor can I answer all calls with, “hello, *company name*, I’m an actual grown-up, how can I help?” Do you have any suggestions?
You’ve somewhat stumped me, but let’s try to puzzle through it. If you just had a young-sounding voice and it was making it hard to sound authoritative, that would be one thing (still challenging, but manageable), but if people are regularly refusing to believe you’re not a child, that’s trickier. Advice like “make sure you’re being extra professional and polished in how you speak” doesn’t work if they’re going to assume you’re a kid playing around.
I think your basic options are: (a) work on changing your voice with practice, possibly even with the aid of a vocal coach if you want to invest in that, or (b) breezily embrace it — “yep, I sound young, but I assure you I’m well into adulthood, now how can I help you?” If someone continues to question you or is otherwise rude, I think you’re allowed to sound annoyed — “sir, I don’t want to debate my age with you, I’m the (job title here), how can I help?” (Adapt based on how direct you can be with customers in your context.)
2. Is it true you should never rate yourself “needs improvement”?
I often see the advice that people should never under any circumstances give themselves the rating of “Needs Improvement” (or “Does Not Meet Expectations,” or however their company phrases the rating for poor performance) when filling out self-evaluations for performance reviews. I understand this to an extent — you don’t want to undercut yourself or emphasize your mistakes unnecessarily. I also think if someone’s performance is right on the line between the two ratings and they can make the case for the higher one, it’s fine for them to select the higher rating, even if ultimately their boss doesn’t agree.
But as a manager who gives performance reviews each year, if I had an employee who was clearly underperforming and they still rated themselves “Meets Expectations,” I would immediately be concerned that there was such a discrepancy in how they viewed their performance versus what I was seeing. This is particularly true since, as you talk about so often, managers should be giving feedback regularly so employees aren’t surprised by performance reviews — i.e., if an employee’s performance is poor and a rating of “Needs Improvement” is likely, they should know that, which means it would make even less sense for them to still give themselves a “Meets Expectations” rating.
What do you think? Is this a smart way for employees to protect themselves, or could it potentially do people more harm than good to give themselves “Meets Expectations” ratings on self-evaluations no matter what?
Yep, I’m with you. If I’ve been giving clear feedback about serious concerns with someone’s work and making it clear they’re not meeting expectations, I’m going to be concerned if their self-evaluation says they are. I suppose an exception to this would be if we had a clear disagreement about those expectations and how their work measured up, and if their self-eval acknowledged that disagreement and laid out their case for the rating … but most of the time, if we’re talking about serious performance problems and you hand in a self-eval that doesn’t reflect those conversations, that’s going to be worrisome.
There are some work environments that are toxic and dysfunctional enough that what you describe is a reasonable self-preservations strategy — but in general it’s a weird and sort of clueless move.
3. Is it rude to bold and highlight key parts of an email?
I have a particular client who is very busy – too busy to read long emails (or get on a phone call instead). I often need a decision from her on, for example, three key questions, but she’ll only answer one, or give a nonsensical answer because she’s clearly just skimming the email and misread something important.
I make the emails as short as I possibly can, but I often need to include technical documentation and supporting data within the email itself. I also try to put the important questions at the top and the details on context below, but she still sometimes misses it.
Is it considered acceptable to format the key things she needs to know or answer in bold with a bright yellow highlight, or is that rude? I’ve done this once or twice when I really needed an answer fast and it worked great, but it also feels a bit aggressive. What’s your take?
It’s not rude, as long as you’re doing it sparingly. It would be annoying and come across aggressively if the email is dripping with bold and highlighting — at that point the formatting is sort of yelling at the person and signaling “PAY ATTENTION, DAMN IT” — but if you’re only bolding/highlighting a few key phrases, it’s fine and often useful.
Another option, of course, is to talk to her about it — saying something like, “I’m finding we’re spending more time emailing because you’re only noticing one question in an email with three of them, so then I need to check back with you on the other two. I don’t mind doing that but is there a better way for me to highlight when I need multiple things from your end?” (For example, maybe she’d rather you send each question in its own email or something diabolical like that.) But yeah, some people are just not careful email readers (and that may be true even with that most strategic bolding in the world).
4. Former coworker keeps trying to contact me and he’s way too persistent
A former coworker persists in trying to contact me, and it’s become a bit strange. Back in January I left my job with a horrendously toxic organization. It was a truly soul-crushing environment rife with every sort of managerial abuse of power imaginable. During my nearly two years with this employer I reluctantly became acquainted with a coworker who was a union representative. My first impression of him was that he was a pathologically nosy, somewhat unhinged piece of work with whom I wanted nothing to do. But, I would at times need union support, and especially as I was leaving the organization I required a bit of union assistance, so I had to deal with him. Despite his strangeness, he actually provided great support and I was grateful for it but ready to move on with my life and put the awful experience behind me.
The first few months after I left the job, he would contact me every four to six weeks or so to vent about the place and try to wheedle from me personal information that I wouldn’t give him. On one call he was actually screaming about the place; I told him I had to go and hung up. Another time, I flat out told him that I wasn’t going to answer a personal question he had asked, and I ended the call. I responded to a few calls and texts, briefly. I really do not want anything to do with this guy, don’t care about the continual drama at the old job, and do not want him knowing anything about my current life. My strategy was to fade out, hoping if I ignored him hard enough he would go away.
Now his attempts to contact me have increased to every couple of weeks. A couple of weeks ago he went so far as to essentially pretend that he provided a job reference for me and texted me asking whether I “got the job.” It was a transparent attempt to elicit a response or some information from me. I had not applied for any jobs where I listed him as a reference. It was strange. I disregarded the text and didn’t respond in any way.
Now I see that he just tried calling me, but didn’t leave a message. I blocked his number. The attempts at contact are never a barrage and haven’t been threatening. I just don’t want anything to do with him.
My boyfriend thinks I should directly confront him and tell him I’m not interested in keeping in contact, I’ve got my own life and issues, and my life is none of his business. I’ve been hesitant to do that because I think he would see it as a challenge and it would inflame him. But then the ghosting hasn’t seemed to work. Again, this guy seems mentally unhinged to some degree so I’m trying to tread lightly.
I’d trust your own instincts on this; your boyfriend’s instincts probably aren’t honed by a lifetime of thinking about safety around men in the way that women have to (or by actual experiences with men who react badly to rejection). I’d also pick up The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker, which is excellent on how to deal with persistent, unwanted attention. One of the points he makes is that when you’re dealing with this kind of behavior, you should tell the person once, clearly, that you’re not interested in further contact and then ignore all future attempts to reach you … because if you give in and respond after 50 calls, you teach the person that calling 50 times is what it takes to get your response. In your case, ideally you might have sent that message earlier on and then ignored everything else. It might make sense to now send a message saying something like, “Got your messages, so busy that I’m not able to stay in contact, good luck with everything” and then set your phone and email so you don’t see future attempts at contact. (Note that de Becker advises that you set this up in a way where you don’t have to see the contacts but there’s a record of them in case you ever need it — like a separate folder in your email that bypasses your inbox, etc.)
But read the book; it’s enormously helpful. (Obligatory note that I make a commission if you use that Amazon link.)
5. Can I use my vacation time to work at a second job?
I have two jobs: my main salaried job and a second weekend gig. They are completely different and don’t overlap at all (think corporate finance and tutoring). I’ve been doing SideJob for years on a volunteer basis and recently discovered I can monetize it. It’s not much, really just coffee/beer money. I’ve been in MainJob for several years and have 15+ years in the industry under my belt.
I have a lot of leave to burn this year for MainJob. It’s use-it-or-lose-it and they’ve been clear there’s no flexibility because of 2020. I’m debating making myself available for a few hours at SideJob while on leave since there’s not much else to do and am having trouble figuring out if this is okay or A Bad Idea. MainJob does not mention or forbid this in the employee manual, but I know that’s not a blanket green light (and there’s always one person who inspires these rules, right?). Both gigs are remote, though SideJob does need me on-site (with no one around), so COVID isn’t a strong consideration.
To be clear, this is not about the money. This is solely about not spending several consecutive days watching Hallmark movies in sweatpants while consuming every pumpkin spice product ever created, and getting out and doing a bit of good in the world when the big stuff is so far outside of my control. If annual leave is meant to refresh and relax, SideJob does this really well. It gets me out of my head for at least a couple of hours and that is something to be treasured right now. I have few other outlets for this at the moment because of Things.
I don’t think it’d be an issue for my management if it ever came to light, knowing them as people, but I’m sensitive to the optics and am not sure if I’m overreacting. Going back to volunteering is unfortunately not an option because of The Times We’re In.
You’re fine. Your vacation time is yours to do what you want with. As long as your main job doesn’t prohibit you from having a second job and you’re not doing anything that’s a conflict of interest, there’s no reason you can’t do something that happens to generate money during your time off.
Normally I’d caution you about getting a real break from work, especially this year, but if the side job really does help you relax and refresh, I don’t see any issues here. Just make sure you get in some actual leisure time as well (there is nothing wrong with a few consecutive days in sweatpants binge-watching TV, and there is often plenty right with it).
my voice makes callers think I’m a kid, former coworker keeps trying to contact me, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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