1. Candidate couldn’t interview because of his workout schedule
I’m hiring for a mid-level professional role (think administrative job in the social services world) and recently extended an invitation for an interview to an applicant. I asked if he might be available to interview on a specific date in the next week and offered several time slots.
He replied, “That’s a pretty busy day for me, but I may be able to swing by after going to the gym. I just hate to meet people in my workout clothes. Any chance you have an opening [2 weeks in the future]?”
I decided I did not want to proceed with a candidate that thinks this is anywhere near normal, so I sent the customary, “Due to our hiring timeline, we unfortunately won’t be able to move forward with an interview at this time … we wish you all the best … etc. etc.” And the applicant responded, “I did not say no, I simply asked about alternative dates.”
I have no question other than: am I wrong to think this is totally unacceptable? I know we, as a society, are promoting self-care and respecting schedules, but this is … no, right?!
Yes, this is a no — mainly because if he didn’t want to schedule the interview for that day, he should have had the sense and professionalism to reply, “That day would be difficult for me; are there other days that might work instead? I could do (date) or (date)” (and ideally those dates would not be two weeks away, but if they had to be, he should have explained he was traveling until then or whatever the constraint was because pushing an interview back that far is frequently, although not always, a big request). There was zero reason for him to volunteer that he just didn’t want to move his gym work-out or to imply that he’d have no choice but to show up in workout clothes (?!). The whole impression is just excessively cavalier and sounds like he has weird priorities. It was reasonable to decide you didn’t want to move forward at all.
2. My husband keeps our family’s personal appointments on his work calendar
My husband has a Gmail account for his work email. He also has a personal Gmail account. When I am scheduling family things, I send calendar invitations to his personal account. However, because his work schedule has so much more on it, he basically just uses that for everything. So there have been times when I’ve sent an important event to his personal email, but after he adds it to his calendar, he doesn’t see it again because he is always using his work calendar. We have had some scheduling issues because of it.
He wants me to just send all calendar events to his work email so he can have everything all in one place. But I hate the idea of people at his work seeing “Mammogram at 4pm” or “Billy’s Therapy Appt.”
I know there are ways he can change privacy settings. And he can also just view one calendar from the other. But these don’t seem foolproof. He might forget to change privacy settings or maybe the higher-ups in his company can still see the details of his calendar even with the privacy settings. If he’s viewing both calendars, he might accidentally schedule something on the wrong calendar.
I dislike feeling exposed to strangers at his office just by scheduling family events. But I know he wants the simplicity of just having things together and on my end it just takes clicking one profile over another when I send an event.
Is there something I’m not considering as far as options go? Am I wrong to be concerned about what his coworkers and supervisors could find out about our private family events?
I’m torn on this! Part of me thinks that since it’s his work life and his relationships with colleagues, then if he doesn’t care, it’s his call. But I also think it’s reasonable for you to be uncomfortable with random people knowing the private details of your family’s appointments. Ultimately I think the solution is to talk to him about why it makes you uncomfortable, ask him to commit to marking those appointments as private (which should make them show up to others simply as “busy”), and from there decide to just trust that he is keeping his word, even if you still feel uneasy — because I don’t think you can control it beyond that. The alternative would be two separate calendars, which for a lot of people means they’ll miss the non-work stuff, which is probably the worst outcome of the two.)
3. I’m nervous about having high-level execs on our DEI council
I’m part of a small group at my company that is trying to get a DEI council off the ground. We’re still in the early stages with a couple meetings behind us. The problem? Over half the people on the calls were extremely high-level execs, including the head of People Ops/HR.
My concern is that DEI and culture conversations can easily touch on private or sensitive experiences, including people’s own struggles at work. Even when no one is admitting to having a specific diagnosis, say, or to being part of a marginalized group, the topics and insights they bring to the table might hint at experiences/issues that could make them professionally vulnerable.
When I raised this privately with the culture leader after one of the calls, they said they understood the concern but felt it was valuable to have people at all levels for shared understanding across the organization. They also said they expect conversations to be approached with empathy and discretion, and that the intention would not be for anyone to feel exposed or judged.
I agree that leadership buy-in matters, but I also didn’t love that the actual reply felt like a brush-off. I’m also still worried that having very senior people in the room could chill the conversation. Even if they are kind and ethical and genuinely committed to creating a healthy culture, we peons can’t always trust that being open about sensitive issues won’t affect how we’re viewed later. In fact, I may be experiencing this right now with one of the leaders in the meeting! (It’s too early to know for sure yet – if I ever will – but I have my suspicions.)
I’m concerned this could be a blocker for encouraging others to join or to use their voice. I’m not even sure I want to be a part of this, when normally I am very open about the things in my life that make my perspective a valuable one in DEI conversations.
Am I right in being turned off by this? I would think it better to have an employee-led space that periodically brings anonymized recommendations and proposed actions to leadership. Is it standard for upper management to attend regularly? Is there a middle ground? I want this effort to succeed, and I don’t want to be unfairly suspicious of leaders who may truly be trying to help. But I also don’t want us to accidentally design a group where the people most affected by workplace culture issues feel least safe speaking honestly.
It depends on what the goals of the DEI council are.
If the goal is to make real changes in your company, you want leadership to be part of it; they’re far better positioned than anyone else to set the company’s DEI strategy and ensure proposals have resources and are actually carried out; that’s not labor that can be offloaded entirely on to employees.
If the goal is more to provide a place for members of marginalized groups to share their experiences and get support from each other (and perhaps from those discussions create proposals that are brought to a group more like the first), then you’re absolutely right — but those are two very different types of groups that serve different functions and different needs.
4. How do I ask to go part-time?
I like my job and my boss. There are issues, but I think they’re mostly kind of amusing and I don’t want to leave. But I do want to go part-time. Not a lot, I was thinking every other Thursday off. What should I keep in mind when asking for such a thing?
Factors to consider: I am doing pretty well at this job, better than the people who “trained” me. I ask for extra work when it’s slow and do thoughtful work. I have been here a year and a half but have been doing variations of this job for my entire 20-year career. I asked about promotions and was told that they are given to people who last a long time, not people who do well and take on extra work. It was all pretty demoralizing.
I’m getting older, and I want to have some time to enjoy life and free time outside of work. I can afford to go part-time, and sometimes it’s pretty slow at work. My boss is the softest, friendliest person I’ve ever worked for, a smart guy but a complete pushover. I have no desire to take advantage of his kind nature. My coworkers, the ones who trained me, are fine weaseling out of work on the flimsiest of pretexts. They are full-time but I don’t know what they do all day. Sometimes they “work” from home. They seem fine being cooped up in an office playing on their phones all day, but it is so boring for me.
I went part-time at a different job, years ago. I worked three days a week for a year after I had a baby. It was a good setup from a lot of perspectives, but I noticed people immediately stopped giving me big projects to do, and I was frustrated by that. I think projects make work interesting.
This is my real sticking point, if I go part-time, even very slightly part-time, I think it will appear as if I’m weaseling out of the interesting parts of the job, when in reality that’s all I want to do. Any advice for threading this needle?
Every other Thursday off is very unlikely to lead to an “out of sight, out of mind” situation like you might have experienced when you were last part-time. That’s so close to full-time that I’m not even sure most places would officially call it part-time!
It’s not likely to look like you’re weaseling out of the interesting parts of your job or, really, out of any parts of your job. That’s not where people’s minds usually go when someone wants to work part-time. It’s just likely to look like you want to reclaim some of your time, which you do. It might be different if you were known as someone who looked for ways to shirk work, but you sound like you’re known as the opposite of that, so I really wouldn’t be concerned about that aspect of it!
Just be up-front about what you want to do and ask if it’s possible. Be prepared that there’s likely to be a corresponding pay cut, of course — but as long as you’re okay with that, it’s a reasonable request to make. Your boss may or may not okay it — there may be good reasons for wanting you available for full-time hours, even if they’re not always filled, or it may not be a battle he wants to spend his own capital on to make happen — but there’s no reason you can’t ask.