It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. Commuting without a shirt on
I have a low-stakes question I’d love your take on. I drive to work on a busy road, and most mornings I see the same man on a bicycle riding to work shirtless. I presume he works in a relatively conservative industry because he bikes wearing dress shoes and gray or black suit pants with a dress shirt and a suit jacket folded into his bike basket.
Every morning he is shirtless (and helmet-less; which is another issue) and I can’t help but wonder — if I worked with this guy, would it be weird? He seems like a pretty average middle-aged guy, not a professional bicyclist, and I presume he’s riding shirtless to prevent sweating on his dress shirt, but it seems to me that if he could bike in shirtless, surely he could just as easily bike to work in a t-shirt?
But is this even something his coworkers or office would have standing to address in a “hey, please arrive to the office fully clothed” way since he clearly isn’t at work yet? I’d love to know your thoughts.
He’s biking to work shirtless rather than in a t-shirt because he’s cooler that way, and shirtless men are normalized in a way shirtless women aren’t. He’s not doing anything wrong! Assuming he puts on a shirt once he arrives at his building and isn’t strolling in topless, his coworkers wouldn’t have any standing to say anything about how he dresses on his commute … and it would be weird if someone attempted it!
2. Can I ask to wrap up my PIP early and leave with unemployment benefits?
I took a job that has turned out to be a horrible fit and has significantly impacted my physical and mental health. After an annual review in which I made it clear that I was unhappy, I was put on a performance improvement plan (PIP). This PIP included feedback I’d never been given before and most goals were written vaguely, with few objective metrics. (For example, when I asked my manager how “good work” would be evaluated, I was told he “just know[s] when it’s good.”) I’d bet next month’s rent that I was never meant to pass the PIP and that it’s intended to lay the groundwork to fire me. It feels like retaliation, but they don’t want me here and I don’t want to be here, so we’re aligned.
The PIP process was paused as I am currently out on FMLA leave due to said impacts on my health (they mishandled this, but that is another letter) and I presume it will restart when I return to work in August. I’m trying to figure out the best way to handle this.
So much of me just wants to cut the bullshit. I want to go to that meeting and say that I’m not a fit for the role and everyone knows it, so I’d prefer not to waste everyone’s time on a PIP and go straight to the termination discussion. Is this a bad idea? All I want is for them to fire me and not fight my unemployment claim. But I worry I might be weakening my position by addressing it directly and be forced to quit instead, killing any chance at unemployment.
Conversely, the idea of spending another 4-6 weeks going through the PIP process in this role is incredibly stress- and anxiety-inducing and I really don’t want to do that, but acknowledge I may need to suck it up and deal if that’s the only path to filing for unemployment.
If you’re sure that that’s what you want to do, you can try saying, “I’ve thought a lot about your feedback and I want to be realistic about my chances of success, for both our sakes. Would you be open to a plan for me to transition out of my role now? In return, I would just want assurance that you wouldn’t contest my unemployment benefits since it sounds like I was likely to be let go at the end of this process and this would simply be an acknowledgement of that.” If you want, you could also ask for an agreement about what future reference-checkers will be told and how your departure is recorded in company records.
A lot of managers will hear that with relief and be glad to agree.
3. My friend/manager is a terrible boss
I had a friend become my manager. While it started off well, I now have real concerns.
I have raised issues and been pushed towards short-term fixes rather than long-term solutions. I have asked for political support and been ignored. I have watched him present team members’ work as his own. It took me reaching a breaking point and escalating a wider team issue to our senior manager before any action was taken. Even then, my manager acted surprised, as though the issue had never been raised before. Any request for real support is matched with airy management book style responses that provide zero actionable help.
Any conversations about progression have been blocked. I never receive feedback despite making multiple requests. I am being told that I am not technical enough to be an individual contributor, despite currently performing that role, yet I am also apparently not suitable to be a manager.
Additionally, I take ownership of much of the team-building, morale, and people-focused work across the team. I organize drinks, gifts, cards, birthdays, and other team activities, yet none of this effort is ever acknowledged.
While I am still friends with him, I genuinely do not know what to do from a professional perspective. If I outline my concerns in the upcoming engagement survey, I worry that it will be used against me in some way. If I say nothing, I remain stuck in what feels like a toxic corporate situation. I simply do not know how to move forward without blowing it all up.
Leave! Friendship issue totally aside, you’re working for a bad manager who doesn’t recognize your work and is blocking your development.
If his manager happens to be excellent and you have good rapport with her, you could try escalating more issues to her (and it sound like that did get action when you did it previously) — but even if that helps around the edges, this is likely to be a continued slog. Put your energy into getting out.
4. Do I acknowledge that I’ve been missing a deliverable when nobody has said anything?
I’m currently freelancing in a creative industry; my work involves being delivered materials, doing stuff to the materials, and sending them back in a (hopefully) improved state. I was never trained in this particular work, but I used to have a related job and I’ve been working in or adjacent to this industry for a long time. I’m good at my job, but there are nuances I miss from not having formal training.
I recently realized that other people doing this work return a document along with the finished materials outlining the choices they made in improving them. (For example, if the work was teapot painting, think “I used Delft blue instead of Tiepolo blue, knobs should always be gilded,” etc.) I knew that these documents existed, but somehow it never occurred to me that I was supposed to be generating them! Nobody has yet gone “hey, where’s the document?” or specified that it’s one of the deliverables, and the assignments keep coming, but there’s no question I’m supposed to be doing this and my failure to do so has probably been noted.
I’m really embarrassed, and a little anxious about generating these documents when I’ve never done it before, but of course I want to start fulfilling this requirement of my job! My question is, what do I say to the assigning companies? I usually work with the same handful of people who send work over to me, and we have friendly relationships, but I am definitely a contractor and not a peer. Do I just quietly start sending the materials back with documentation and never acknowledge that I wasn’t sending it before? Do I admit my ignorance and assure them the docs will come through in the future? Secret third thing?
I think you can just start sending the documents with your assignments! They can address their previous absence if they want to, but if no one has mentioned it up until now and they’ve continued to assign you work, it’s probably not worth being mortified about. Start sending them now and all should be fine.
5. How should my resume note that my certifications are under a different last name?
I am a mid-career professional, and I am recently divorced. When I married, I took my (now-ex) husband’s last name, so I changed my name from Jane Smith to Jane Warbleworth and have been known as such for the past eight years or so.
I am starting the process of having my name changed back to Jane Smith. However, in the past eight years, I have earned an MBA, as well as a professional certification from a national society with a searchable database; both of these have my name on them as Jane Warbleworth.
The professional certification is a major asset in my industry, and it is possible that a prospective employer could attempt to look me up in the database; they will find Jane Warbleworth, but not Jane Smith. Could you please tell me how one handles writing a resume where she is now known as Jane Smith, but has spent most of her professional life being known as Jane Warbleworth?
Some people handle it by writing their name this way for a while:
Jane Smith (Warbleworth)
If you don’t want to do that on your resume, you can include a note next to the certification like this:
(as Jane Warbleworth)
Or you can simply bring it to the attention of employers before any background check process starts.
Also, any chance the society that issued the certification would simply be willing to update your name?