I’m off for the holiday. Here are some past letters from the archives.
1. My boss is using a terrible photo — should I say something?
I work remotely as a part-time assistant for a former professor of mine from college. We’ve known each other for a few years now and have a very positive relationship. I am a younger man in my mid-20s and she is an older woman in her mid-40s. I say that because it’s important context for my question.
I recently noticed on her website that she updated her home photo to one that I think is very unflattering. The lighting and angle to me aren’t great and I think it’s not an accurate representation of what she actually looks like, and I’m afraid it may turn clients off.
Do I say something? If so, how can I without sounding like a jerk young guy suggesting my older female boss use a more flattering picture?
Nope. Say nothing.
Even with gender and age differences aside, it takes a very specific type of relationship to tell your boss that her photo sucks and she should use a different one. Throw in the gender difference and it’s just not a thing you’re well positioned to do. If you were in charge of marketing for her, then maybe — but otherwise let her decide this one on her own.
– 2018
2. Can you expense an extra hotel because of ghosts?
I manage a large team who are constantly working away for our clients and, as a result, stay on-site in hotels up and down the country. We always require our clients to provide accommodation as part of their contract.
Today I received a call from one of the clients that they had booked and paid for a hotel but they subsequently found out the educator hadn’t checked in. I contact the colleague in question and she was very clear that the hotel they had booked was haunted and she refused to stay there. She had booked a separate hotel and was planning to expense it. Our client was, understandably, unhappy they had paid out for a room that was not being used and so charged it back to us. This means we are paying for two rooms for the week.
The colleague in question is a sensible, intelligent woman who doesn’t have a flair for the dramatics at all. When we called her it became clear she was genuinely distressed about the prospect of the staying in the hotel because of her firm belief it was haunted (I have emails that I can share with you but I don’t want this published as I’m not sure that’s fair, she would be instantly recognized) She offered to stay at home and drive to work which would have been 4 hours each way, rather than stay in this hotel.
The hotel in question has good reviews on TripAdvisor and meets our company guidelines but does advertise itself as haunted as a touristy gimmick. She didn’t enter the hotel as she looked it up before and refused to go. We did move her and have swallowed the cost of both hotels but I was wondering what your take would be? Should she be allowed to change hotels at a cost to the company because of ghosts?
Sure, once. Some people are truly rattled by this kind of thing, for religious reasons or otherwise, and you want your employees to be comfortable while they’re traveling (and not, say, get a terrible night’s sleep because they’re freaked out by where they’re staying). But let her know that in the future, she should check out hotels ahead of time and, if she has any objections that cause her to change hotels, she needs to ensure the original reservation is canceled so no one is left paying for it. It may even make sense for her to book her own hotels and then bill it to the client later; that’s not an uncommon way to do this.
Also, though, it doesn’t make sense that your company is paying for two hotels and the client is paying for none. Paying for accommodations was part of the deal, and they should either pay for the first hotel or the second hotel — not back out of that part of the deal entirely.
Read an update to this letter here.
– 2019
3. I was demoted because my employee killed someone
Is it common for a manager to be demoted over the actions of one of their reports, when they had no knowledge or control over what happened? Two of my reports and some of their colleagues were sent to an out-of-state conference by our company. I was not asked to go since I was attending a trade show somewhere else. There was an incident with one of my reports at the conference. After things had wrapped up for the night, my report used illegal drugs, left the hotel, caused the death of a random individual, and was found with no clothes. My report has been charged with murder.
I did not hire them (they were on the team when I was hired to replace their retiring manager), did not know they used illegal drugs (I have never seen them impaired), and was not at the conference, but I was demoted to a non-management job over what happened. My (former) boss, HR, and the company say they had to do it to send a message. The person who hired my report and the managers who were at the conference were not demoted or written up like I was. I have been told the demotion is non-negotiable and to stop trying to fight it. My (former) boss says it is common for managers to be demoted when someone they manage does something wrong or troublesome to the company. I understand the company is embarrassed and is facing backlash over this but I had nothing to do with it. Is it really common for managers to get demoted over things they had no control over? I would appreciate any thoughts you might have. The demotion comes with a big title loss and pay cut. I am still reeling and my heart goes out to the victim. I had no idea what my report would do.
It sounds like they demoted you in an effort to show that they’re “doing something” about what happened. Demoting you doesn’t sound like it does actually do anything about what happened, so it’s for show, not for any reason of substance. (Assuming, of course, that you didn’t ignore previous signs of trouble with that employee.) It’s not uncommon for companies to want to play to public perceptions when something goes terribly wrong, although it’s pretty awful when they do something like this rather than taking a real look at whether they played any role in what happened and, if so, taking real responsibility for that (if they had any — it’s not clear that anyone at your company was negligent here, other than the employee themselves).
Because they’ve told you this is non-negotiable and to stop fighting it, I’d say your best bet is to work on moving on from this company, where you’re not only being treated unfairly but are likely to be held back from any future professional mobility because of this awful situation.
– 2018
4. Can I ask to work from home when it’s really hot outside?
I have a question about asking to work from home in extreme heat. I live in a very pedestrian-friendly city and do not have a car. I have a 15-minute walk to work, which is a huge perk, except during the summer, when the weather in my city is very hot and humid all season long. We are in a particularly hot patch — temperatures in the high 80s/low 90s by 9 a.m., with 70-80% humidity, and a heat index of 100+. I’m not asthmatic, but I find the air hard to breathe. My morning commute is miserable; even if I take the nearby bus, I still have to walk a couple blocks to get to the office, and just those few blocks leave me so drained and in a bad mood. There is virtually no parking near our office, so everyone commutes by public transit or on foot or a combination of both. Taking an Uber or cab every morning would add up to over $200 a month, at a conservative estimate.
Is it fair to ask to work from home on days when the heat index is over 100 degrees? The management team allows everyone to work from home on Fridays in the summer because it’s such a slow season. I made a joke about this to our number two person and she didn’t respond at all — it was like she pretended not to hear me. Was I overstepping the line?
Well, maybe. There are so many hot days during the summer that in a lot of areas, this would be like asking to work from home every time it rains. That said, this kind of thing can be office-dependent. If you’re in an office that’s really flexible about working from home and your area doesn’t have a ton of 100+ heat index days, then maybe. But if you’re somewhere where extreme heat is just a normal thing that happens during summer, then yeah, it’s probably not a thing you can do very often, lest you look like you’re making too big a deal of relatively normal weather. (That obviously changes if there are health conditions in play.)
– 2018
5. My employee wants me to teach her a skill she doesn’t really need for her job
I currently manage a team of eight people. How much additional knowledge and information should I share with my employees outside of what is needed for them to do their job? For example, one of my staff members asked me to train her on using Microsoft Excel. Everything I’ve learned about Excel I taught myself, plus I needed to know it for my position. In her position, she doesn’t really need to know anything more than just the basics, which she already knows. So where do I draw the line? This would be advancing her Excel skills on a more personal level, but it’s not necessarily a good use of company time since she doesn’t perform any advanced work in that program.
On one hand, helping employees increase their skills and develop professionally is a good way to retain strong people, and you don’t need to be 100% rigid about ensuring that it’s directly related to their job duties. However, there are limits to that; you want to balance professional development against factors like how strong the employee is (and thus how much you care about investing in them and retaining them), how much time, money, or other resources the development would take (in general, as well as relative to what you might be interested in doing for others on your team), and how far away from the person’s job the skill is.
In this case, she’s asking not just to spend her own time learning a skill that you don’t think she’ll need for her job, but also for you to spend your time teaching it to her. That’s a pretty big ask and it probably doesn’t make sense for you to spend your time that way. But maybe you could tell her a bit about how you taught yourself, point her toward any online tutorials or other resources that you found especially useful, and suggest that she explore that way, as well as offer to show her a few specific functions if there are some that she’s especially interested in.
In other words, not a flat “no,” but a “how about this instead?”
– 2015