1. Should I attend a social event with an employee who I’ll probably need to fire?
I’m the manager of a small team. I get on well with all of them. However, one employee is a consistent problem. I’ve started the investigation/disciplinary process and have had a couple of formal meetings so far. However they haven’t changed their ways and don’t seem to have understood the seriousness of the situation. On one level I like the person, but they’re a terrible employee and unless they radically change their ways, we are going to end up parting ways. I’ve recently altered my relationship with them and I am now more distant than I once was, to try and make this process easier. We used to talk about our lives, but now I try to keep conversations focused on work.
There is a social event coming up (organized by an employee) and I have been invited. Given the size of the team, it would be strange for me not to attend. I want to build relationships with them. However, this problem employee will be there. I can’t imagine how I will interact with the employee in a social setting. Obviously I will keep professional boundaries with everyone, but ultimately it’s about having fun and I don’t think I’ll be able to look this person in the eye knowing I am probably going to fire them soon. Should I attend? Should I make an excuse? Am I overthinking?
If you don’t think you can treat them with a reasonable amount of warmth (including looking them in the eye!), you should skip it. Have a conflict that prevents you from being able to attend; that could happen anyway. It’s not fair to the employee to have their boss being weird to them at a social event, and it’s not fair to anyone else on your team who might pick up on your discomfort.
But I’d also encourage you to think about social boundaries with your team generally. The reality of working as a manager is always that you could need to fire someone at some point (or lay them off, or give them really difficult feedback, or so forth). You want to build that reality into the relationships. That doesn’t mean you should be chilly with anyone — you should be warm! — but there also shouldn’t be a noticeable difference in how you interact with someone if they do start struggling with their work. Ideally you’d find a way to be warm to everyone the whole way through, no matter what’s happening in their work, rather than start out warm but pull back in ways that will be noticeable. But you also need to balance that with some amount of professional distance too — friendly but not friends is probably the best way to capture it — and that’s more an art than a science.
2. Going back to a job where the CEO doesn’t like me
I work in a very niche, competitive field that’s shrinking due to federal policy that’s actively antagonistic to the industry and broader political/cultural shifts away from our product. It’s sad. But I still love it.
I was laid off from my job last year because of those pressures. I truly loved and excelled at that job, and I was really sad to lose it. Leadership told me they felt the same way about me, and left me with every reason to believe that eliminating my role was purely a financial decision and I was leaving on the best of terms.
It’s been hard ever since. I’ve been getting by on temporary contracts, hoping upon hope that an appropriate job would open up at one of the two organizations in my region where I could continue doing this work I love so much. Imagine my elation when just such a job came open at my old organization! I applied, expecting to be welcomed back with open arms. Instead I got a kiss-off email from HR.
I’m still close with my old supervisor, Chris, so I gave him a call. We had a very uncomfortable conversation, where Chris essentially told me that the CEO, Mary, blocked my application out of an unspecified personal animus toward me. This is a woman I’ve interacted with just a handful of times! She kept herself cloistered, and I’ve been racking my brain to think of when I might have even had the opportunity to offend her. I’ve always been a well-liked and valued member of my work teams. I love collaboration and have lots of work friends. I’m even-tempered and considerate. I was completely baffled, and devastated, to hear this.
Fast forward a few weeks. I get a text from Chris encouraging me to apply for a second job that just opened at the same organization, which would be very attractive to me if I didn’t know that the CEO carries a mysterious personal grudge against me. Chris tells me he’s made sure my application will be considered this time and assures me that if I get the job, he can be a buffer, shielding me from any interference from Mary.
I’m torn. I love the work and I’d love to work with Chris again. But I don’t know if I can operate effectively knowing what I know about Mary’s unspecified personal animus toward me. What do I do with this information? It would be crazy for me to go back to the organization that laid me off and then wouldn’t rehire me because of the CEO’s vague ill will toward me, right? Would that calculus change if I told you Mary will likely be leaving the organization soon?
My field is so niche that there are no more than one or at most two relevant organizations in any region, and I’m not in a position to move. The second organization in my region hasn’t had an opening in over a year, so unless I go for this job, I’m just playing a waiting game at the other.
If Mary is definitely leaving soon, that changes everything and you have no reason not to go for it.
But even if she’s not, you should at least throw your hat in the ring and get in their hiring process while you gather more information and decide. As part of that, you should have another conversation with Chris along the lines of, “I’d love to come back and I’m also really thrown by what you shared about Mary, and am questioning how effective I could be there in light of that. It’s not in my long-term interests to work somewhere where the CEO doesn’t like me, even with you as a buffer, so I’m hoping you can tell me more about what’s going on there so that I can make a good decision for myself.”
3. How long should I be willing to stay a temp?
I was hired at my current job 11 months ago as an hourly temp employee working 40 hours per week. During my interviews, they told me they could offer me the job for “at least a year,” but couldn’t be more specific than that. I needed a job, so I took it. There is no end date listed on my temp contract, just a start date.
After nine months, I asked my manager what the outlook was for my position, since we were coming up on the one-year point and I hadn’t received any updates. I also inquired about the possibility of switching to a non-temp position.
He said there is an “obvious continued need” for my work “for the foreseeable future.” He also said my job wasn’t something they could offer me a non-temp position for, and the only upcoming opening was for a new position that would require a more advanced degree than I have. He said he would let me know if anything did open up.
I have a few concerns about the reasoning he gave me, but I’m not sure if they’re reasonable to bring up. The first is that I’m one of only two employees with my job title and the other is a salaried employee and has been salaried the whole time she’s had this title. The second is that the new job which was posted that I was told required a higher degree, didn’t — in the posting (which I only saw after the hiring process was completed), the only required educational qualification was a bachelor’s degree, which I have.
I like my job a lot, and I’m good at it. I’ve been formally recognized several times for my “above and beyond” work. I know that there’s no limit to how long a temp position can last, but I’m having a difficult time with the indefinite timeframe. Additionally, the benefits through the temp agency are the absolute bare minimum they are legally required to offer, and I’m spending a sizable portion of my income covering what those benefits don’t.
Are these reasonable concerns to bring to my manager? Is this something that it would be at all acceptable to speak to my manager’s boss about? I also would be willing to pursue a higher degree for this job, but I would need to know my employment was more steady.
Not really. Right now, the temp job is what they’re prepared to offer you.
They’re allowed to prefer a temp for your role, even if the other person doing the work has been an employee the whole time; they may feel, for example, that the workload isn’t certain enough in the long-term to justify two employee hires. And your boss might have been right about the hiring manager for the other job preferring an advanced degree even if that wasn’t in the job posting (if the person hired has the advanced degree, I’d take that as evidence of that) … or he might have been wrong without deliberately misrepresenting anything to you. That might be a sign that you shouldn’t take your boss’s word as gospel on this kind of thing in the future and should talk to any internal hiring managers directly, but that’s all I’d conclude from that.
4. Was I right to turn down this offer?
I wanted to get a gut check on something. After a whirlwind interview process, I received a lucrative job offer last week from a company that was very enthusiastic about my candidacy.
However, the offer letter contained several draconian clauses: a non-compete provision and a social media monitoring clause that would both extend for two years after my employment. Additionally, the health insurance details were vague, the PTO was limited to just 10 days combined for sick leave and vacation, and the termination clause required three weeks’ notice from me but offered no reciprocal consideration from them.
Because of these restrictive terms, I turned the offer down. Although they asked to get on a call to discuss adjustments, I decided to decline. I feel that even if they modified the terms, I do not want to work for an organization that considers it acceptable to treat employees this way.
I suppose I just wanted to see what you thought of this. I run my own business now and have a client that keeps me flush. Is this as bananapants as I think it is? Or did I overreact?
No, those are terrible terms. The non-compete may or may not be enforceable (a lot of them aren’t) and the three-week notice requirement definitely isn’t (unless you sign a contract with consideration on each side, which an offer letter is not, and where they give up at-will employment), and the health insurance isn’t necessarily bad just because the details in the offer letter were vague (and you could ask for more specifics), but social media monitoring two years after you don’t work there?! 10 days combined sick and vacation? All of it taken together paints a picture of what this employer is like, and that picture is not a good one.
5. Should I send a follow-up to a job I didn’t get?
I graduated with a master’s degree this spring, and spent the summer searching for a job. I ideally wanted to find a job in higher education, though it is difficult to get a foothold in academia (particularly in my field) without a doctorate. I was in the final round of an interview process with Dream School. I did not end up receiving the offer, and recently saw that it went to someone with a doctorate (as expected).
I now have a job in administration connected to my field, though my job has no actual in-field responsibilities. My relative, who is a professional coach and whom I trust, suggested I reach out to Dream School and let my contact there know where I landed, that I wish them the best, and that if they ever expand their program I’d be interested in applying. This feels unnecessarily familiar to me, though I did have good (professional) rapport with the contact. It also seems strange since the only world where they need another hire any time soon is one where they get rid of the person they hired over me. If/when they expand the department, their next hires will almost certainly be people with other specialties. Lastly, it strikes me as a little rude to my current employer and/or disingenuous, as I genuinely like my new job and Dream School is in another state — it would be a major life upheaval if I took a job there, so I wouldn’t make that decision lightly. I almost certainly wouldn’t move there for just an adjunct position, which I’d expect to be their next step.
Is this just a normal thing that I should do to keep up professional contacts? Is it worth doing even when I sincerely doubt it would ever bear fruit? For what it’s worth, my contact at the school isn’t in the field himself, he’s an administrator who is overseeing a multi-pronged expansion in the school’s programs.
Sending an email letting them know you’re interested in staying in touch wouldn’t be overly familiar; it’s the type of thing people do all the time and it would be normal and not weird or pushy. It also wouldn’t be rude to your current employer (you’re allowed to network and think about your career long-term) or disingenuous (you’re not saying you’d definitely take a position with them regardless of what it was). And you don’t really know that the only way they’d hire again would be if they got rid of the new hire! You don’t have that kind of info about their plans.
All in all, you’re making this much more complicated than it is! If you want to build the connection, send the email. If you don’t, that’s fine too. That kind of email can be useful in maintaining the connection, but it’s certainly not make-or-break (and it’s the kind of email that recipients rarely read deeply into anyway, precisely because it’s such a pro forma networking gesture). If you feel weird about sending it, you can skip it without any additional thought.