It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. Do I really need to take calls from work on my honeymoon?
I’m getting married this weekend! Yay! I’m taking two weeks off for the honeymoon. The original plan was to go to Hawaii, but due to the times, we are staying put. I thought about cancelling or shortening the time off, but I decided that I had few enough opportunities to celebrate so I needed to take advantage of the one thing this year that is an absolute good in my life.
However, some big changes are looming at my company that’s all very hush hush right now. I only know because of my position. I wear a lot of hats at work (small company) — IT, budgets, office management, contracts, vendor management, marketing, etc. I am very involved in this hush hush big change, and I know that things can’t just be put on hold because I’m not there.
I’ve done everything I can to prepare for the two weeks: given account access to other senior people, written up detailed documentation, talked through items that might occur until I’m blue in the face, etc. But my boss is not satisfied. She wants me to promise I would be available if “something came up.”
I’m going to be on my HONEYMOON! I have had this time off planned and approved since January! I have been struggling this whole year (started working with a therapist and was prescribed antidepressants because my mental health was deteriorating), and I really want to unplug and recharge. But with everything going on with the business, I don’t know how hard of a line I can draw. All information that would be needed is filed so those with access can see it, so I am not needed to actually access any info, but I am likely to know more easily and quickly what that info is or where it’s located or which vendor to reach out to.
Do I tell her that if it’s an emergency they can text, and I’ll get back when I can? Do I say I won’t be available at all? If I were going to Hawaii as planned, I really would be more out of touch, but it’s harder to convince people when you’re staying home.
You’re going on your honeymoon and the time off has been approved since January. Say you won’t be available at all. If it helps it go down easier, say you and your fiancé have promised each other for months that you’ll turn off all devices and be unavailable during this time. (You shouldn’t have to say that, but sometimes that kind of thing can help.) You can also say if it were anything other than your honeymoon you’d find a way to be flexible but it’s not possible for this.
If you anticipate a lot of pushback, it might be more effective to be vaguer: “I can’t promise anything, we’ll probably have our phones off most of the time…” and then keep yourself unavailable. Change your outgoing voicemail message to say, “I’m on my honeymoon and unavailable until (date) and will get back to you then.” And then just don’t respond.
This doesn’t sound like a situation where you’re the only one who could help in an emergency; it sounds like it would just save them some time and energy, and that doesn’t meet the bar for making you work on your honeymoon.
2. Traveling after graduating
I am a third year college student and I’ve been reading your blog for years. It’s helped me avoid bad resume advice and feel a lot less anxious about the world after I finish school. Right now I have a more long-term question. I am very disappointed that I will be unable to study abroad due to the pandemic. I had been looking forward to it for years. However, now I have the opportunity to graduate a semester early. I am considering using the savings I had set aside to study abroad to travel instead for a few months after I graduate (assuming it’s safe by then). My parents are concerned that having any period of time between when I graduate and when I start working will be a blemish on my resume that I will have to explain for the rest of my life. I understand that if I waited to travel until after I had been working for a few years that wouldn’t look great to employers, but do you agree that I need to start work immediately after I graduate? Is it really going to be that harmful in the long run to wait a couple of months before applying for jobs?
Here’s the advice I would have given you before Covid: Nah, you’re probably fine. There are a handful of industries that hire graduating seniors on a fairly strict schedule — like they’ll have a class of new hires who graduated in the spring, and if you miss that it can be hard to get in the door with them as an entry-level hire. But they’re the exception; most employers don’t hire that way. Traveling for a few months before you start your job search isn’t likely to be a big deal.
Here’s the advice I have to give now: I don’t know! None of us really know how the job market is going to shake out right now, but one thing that’s clear is that there’s a lot more competition than normal because so many people have lost their jobs this year. New grads will be competing against people with more experience who are wiling to work for less money than they used to be, so I’d be more cautious than usual about doing anything else that would put you at a disadvantage. Traveling for a few months after graduation probably won’t do that, but look at the state of the job market your senior year before you decide anything for sure. (And to be clear, that’s not about employers caring that you took a few months of to travel — they won’t — it’s about how long your job search might end up being. Your degree is just as fresh in August as it is in May … but if you don’t start searching until August and then your search takes months because the job market is bad, at some point it is going to seem more stale, and employers interested in new grads will be focusing on the class after you.)
3. How can I explain declining to recommend a former friend?
Someone I was very close to in college, but have since drifted apart from, has had a career change and is entering my industry. We used to be nearly best friends for our early years as this person was very charismatic, but I stopped contact after I realized they were actually quite manipulative and vindictive. Perhaps somewhat relevant, I saw them working at their on campus job regularly, and they were not a reliable employee.
We have not spoken in about three years since graduating, aside from the occasional birthday wishes. They’ve since requested a referral to an open role at my company. I’ve reviewed their portfolio, and even if we were on good terms, I don’t feel like it’s up to the standards my team would expect. It covers skills we are looking for, but there were multiple errors that I noticed immediately.
To be honest, I don’t even want to give them advice on why their portfolio is lacking, and there’s no way I’d actually refer them to my company. Still, we share a lot of mutual connections from college (again, they’re very charismatic and still fairly popular in our circles), and I’m concerned about burning bridges. Is there an elegant way out that won’t give them much reason to go scorched earth and badmouth me to our mutual connections? Am I being too harsh on someone whose work ethic may have changed in the past few years?
You’re not being too harsh. Of what you know of this person, they’re unreliable, manipulative, and vindictive — each of which on its own is a reason not to recommend someone. And yes, it’s possible they’ve changed in the last three years, but you also know they have errors in their current work. You don’t owe anyone a recommendation or referral; in fact, you owe it to your company to not vouch for someone who you have a negative opinion of.
One option is to say something like, “For this role, I know we’re really looking for X but I’d be glad to tell you if that changes,” where X is something they don’t have (a strong background in Y, more years of experience, or so forth). But if there’s no plausible way to do that, another option is to just be vague — “Let me see what I can do!” or similar, without any promise to take a specific action.
4. Our bad manager is driving away all our staff
I work for a small company of about 25 employees and no HR. We’ve got two managers and a semi-retired owner. Since the pandemic started, one of our managers basically forced the other out of his position and now he’s a regular employee, allowing her to unilaterally make decisions. Unfortunately her handling has been extremely reactive, and she works from home a lot, meaning she is very out of touch with her employees’ experience living with her decisions — reopening without consulting staff to figure out their comfort levels, abruptly changing schedules and job descriptions, and more. Recently we lost three long-time staffers due to her — two to extreme abuse at the hands of customers that could have been prevented had a manager been there instead of at home, and a third to overwork. The third is a sad case of our manager stomping on her boundaries and repeatedly calling her on her days off to cover shifts and answer emails, even though she was told to stop by that employee. We’ve got another staffer about to quit for that same reason.
How do I tell her that she needs to back off a bit before we lose the rest of our staff? The rest of us are afraid to say anything because she has a habit of ignoring unpleasant truths, especially since she was explicitly told why those people quit and she changed nothing.
If she has a habit of ignoring unpleasant truths and she’s already been told why the other people quit, do you have any reason to think speaking up will change anything? Unless you have particularly strong influence with her, it doesn’t sound like it’s likely to make much difference — especially because it’s not one lone thing she’s doing (potentially easier to stop) but rather is a pattern of bad judgment and poor management skills (much harder to fix). If you’re going to talk to anyone, it sounds like it needs to be the owner, who may not realize that the three recent resignations were due to this manager (with a fourth on the way).
5. How do I figure out work-from-home expenses?
Our small office shut down due to Covid in March. I now go in once a week to do work I can only do in the office but work from home the rest of the week. At home I use my personal laptop and home printer. Although I took home a ream of paper for my printer, I’m beginning to realize that much of my printing is work-related and I’m replacing my ink cartridges more frequently. And I haven’t been keeping track of whether or not I’ve used more than a ream of paper so far. (Most likely, I have.) Also, I’m using my computer much more each day due to work. Recently, its charge time has gone down by half and I’ll need to replace its battery. When I first started working from home, my boss tried to load the Windows Office Suite on my laptop. It didn’t load and my personal version of the Word Suite disappeared. To get it back, I’ll need to buy a new copy. We think it was because she tried to load a PC version on my Mac but we’re not sure what went wrong. Since I can use the Apple versions (Pages, Numbers, etc.) instead, we haven’t really addressed this.
My productivity is much higher higher at home since I have so many fewer interruptions. So, my boss agrees that working from home can continue until the pandemic is over and possibly longer. She’s talked about budgeting for a laptop to replace my office desktop computer which I could also use at home. Although that would solve my computer costs, I’m much more comfortable with my Mac—I’d just like a Mac version of Windows Office loaded on my laptop. Or is that a bad idea? (I don’t save anything work related onto my computer, only on USB sticks to keep work and home files separate. And I use Chrome only for work and other servers for my personal use.) And what about the other expenses—battery life, printer ink and printer wear and tear, etc.? How do I determine what I should be asking for in terms of home office expenses? Or should I be itemizing home office expenses on my taxes instead? (Although I don’t pay that much in taxes right now so I wonder if I’d really recover the expenses in the first place.)
The basic principles are that doing your job shouldn’t cost you money and your employer should cover its own costs of doing business. That means they pay for your paper, ink cartridges (if you use them for personal stuff too, figure out a rough percentage for work use), computer, and whatever else you need to do your job. I’d avoid using your personal laptop if given the choice; even if you prefer working on a Mac. Using your own computer as your main work machine blurs the lines too much, and it’s hard to figure out (much less get) appropriate compensation for wear and tear. Until/unless that happens, they should cover the cost of your new battery since if you don’t get it, you can’t do your job. They also should reimburse you for the app your manager deleted if indeed you need to buy a new copy (but make sure you really do; normally you’d be able to just re-download it unless you had a very old version).
Don’t rely on itemizing home office expenses on your tax return; that deduction went away for almost everyone but the self-employed last year.
taking work calls on my honeymoon, traveling after graduating, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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