1. Is it normal to include a social lunch as part of interviews?
I have a friend who just went through a final round interview for a position at a small company. He was flown out and put up in a hotel on the company’s dime and had a whole afternoon of in-person interviews. This was after a couple virtual rounds.
Part of the schedule for the day was a lunch with the hiring panel. There wasn’t any discussion about work-related topics during the lunch, but it seems it was part of how he was being evaluated for if he was a good fit.
This seems off to me, but I’ve never interviewed for a position this senior before or been flown out for an interview, so maybe I’m just not familiar with this norm. But it seems to me that as long as you’re not spouting super offensive stuff that is out of line with the company values or doing something that would make you hard to work with, then the social side of things shouldn’t really come into play. It feels to me like they’re screening for someone who they would be friends with instead of a work colleague. Am I off-base?
Lunch during day-long interviews is common in a lot of fields. To some extent it’s seen as basic hospitality, but there’s also a component of checking out what the person is like in a more relaxed atmosphere and how they mesh with the team. For some jobs that doesn’t matter; for many senior jobs, it does. Plus, some candidates reveal highly relevant things in less formal settings that they’d never say in an interview. And it’s an opportunity for candidates to talk to potential future colleagues about the job and the company in a more casual environment.
It does introduce another opportunity for bias, so it’s important that companies that do this ensure everyone involved is trained on what they should and shouldn’t be assessing — for example, it doesn’t matter if someone is a picky eater or doesn’t share your hobbies or your non-professional interests; it does matter if they’re rude, or can’t connect well with people in a role that requires schmoozing clients over meals, or so forth.
2. Performing on an unsafe stage
My boyfriend and I are musicians. We are fortunate to be part of a vibrant and close-knit musical community, located near a popular tourist area, with many restaurants and other venues that offer live music (and gigs for us and our friends).
Recently, one of these venues built an outdoor stage. It’s about 15 feet above the audience, on a steep hillside, with the listeners located directly below. The walls and floor are built from pallets and other secondhand lumber. Boulders have been piled against the hillside as a retaining wall, below the performance area.
The stage floor is made of untreated wood planks, obviously used at some point before. They’re nailed in place with about an inch of space between each one. When you stand or walk across the stage, you definitely feel some “give” to those planks.
A wood wall, made of more secondhand planks, is nailed vertically to the front of the stage, between the performance area and the boulder retaining wall. Each plank extends about three inches above the level of the stage floor; there is no railing or other structure to prevent a performer from falling off and landing on the boulders below. There’s a metal roof above the stage, but it doesn’t have much of an overhang, so if it rains and the floor gets wet, the untreated wood will get wet, too (along with the musicians and their equipment).
The stage was built at the beginning of the summer, so it’s new to us musicians. At first, we had a choice between the new stage or a large tent at the other end of the outdoor dining area, where we would be safely on the ground. But now, the venue’s owner insists that we must use the new stage, an unpopular decision with the musicians. Not only is it hazardous — it also removes us from our audience and affects the quality of the performance. We have a hard time adjusting the sound quality from our audio equipment; we’re so far away from the listeners, we have no idea what they hear.
I find it hard to believe that this venue’s liability insurance company would allow this stage to be used, or even built. What can we do? If someone tells us to “break a leg,” are we destined to literally do that?
You should explain your concerns and refuse to play on the stage — and better yet, organize your fellow musicians in the area to do the same. There’s power in numbers, and if enough of you refuse you might get action. Either way, don’t be talked into doing something you don’t think is safe.
3. I’m on a board and a staff member got angry at my feedback
I am a representative on my organization’s board, soon to be finishing my one-year term. I’m part of a “next generation board” initiative, so there’s a significant age and experience gap between me and “regular” board members. They also get elected for three-year terms, while our positions are one year. Both roles are technically the same — both full voting members of the board — the regular members just have a lot more experience than I do.
As I have done with countless other issues, I recently highlighted an oversight in a policy that was being brought for approval to the board. The chair was grateful for the challenge, and an executive took it as an action to amend. However, the person whose team drafted the policy was not so grateful. Not even five minutes later, during the meeting I get what felt like a rather scathing message saying I had “blindsided” and “undermined” them and them asking me not to “lowball” them like that, citing a “no surprise culture.”
My first instinct is to find this message largely inappropriate. As a board member, it is my role to scrutinize the staff’s work output, and not speaking up would have meant a flawed policy being approved. I take their point about emailing beforehand, but I had neither the time nor the requirement to do so. I don’t think they would have sent this message to a regular (non representative) NED, and that “email first” expectation had never been raised before.
Furthermore, if this had happened to a more junior representative on the board, I’m sure they would have found it intimidating (due to the staff member’s seniority). Because of that, I’m inclined to bring this up with the chair to prevent a decline in board culture and morale. It feels like the right thing to do. Would you agree? I don’t want to sour my relationship with the chair.
Yes, you should raise it with the board chair. They should know the staff member is reacting defensively to board input, and if there is an expectation that board members should give feedback directly to staff before raising it with the whole board, that should be made clear. (But I doubt that’s the case, and it’s not unusual that the first time a board member has a chance to review something is at a board meeting.)
This shouldn’t sour your relationship with the board chair, assuming you bring it up calmly and just frame it as, “This seems like something you should be aware of.”
4. Should I tell the company that fired me to stop engaging with me?
I went from high performer to scapegoat after speaking up at my last job. I was the glue in my department who took on the work of others as they left when positions were not refilled, and the recipient of more work “because of my good work.” The environment was riddled with dysfunctional management. The situation was impossible and reaching out to upper management for help put a huge target on my back. My supervisor plotted to remove me, openly lied about me, and was successful because the whole process was biased. I watched him do this to someone before me, too, and 30% of my branch mates voluntarily departed in the time before I left because of the bad acting manager. I was planning my departure before I was fired, but once I received notification that my performance was being reviewed, I dug in and made them go through the entire process before they could officially fire me. I received a top award from another group that I supported for the past few years and received notification of my poor performance from my manager in the same week. I have had therapy to work through all this, and I am at peace out of this unhealthy environment.
In the six months since I left, I have noticed that my direct supervisor checks my LinkedIn profile about every two weeks. I do not post content in general and have purposefully kept my new role vague. I am not directly connected to him and also disconnected from most of my colleagues to have a clean break. Now I find out that I was used in a new promotional video, along with five others who also left, as if we are current employees. The video is available publicly. I was shocked, but not surprised, that they had the gall to include me after claiming I was not a cultural fit and firing me.
I am tempted to email some of the uppermost management, cc’ing my old supervisor, politely requesting that they stop engaging with me. My intent would be to let them know that I am aware and perhaps it will deter them from continuing out of embarrassment. I do not care about a response from them, as they will probably make up some narrative that suits them. My new role is in a completely different industry so this will not affect me professionally. Do I write a professionally worded email giving them the side eye about engaging with me? Or do I publicly mention my surprise at their actions since I left in the comments in the video they posted?
Eh, looking at your LinkedIn profile and including you in a video (that was presumably recorded while you were still an employee) isn’t really engaging with you. It would be different if they were actively presenting you as a current employee — like on a dated public statement or something — but this doesn’t sound like that.
The LinkedIn data isn’t necessarily even accurate.
Block your supervisor on LinkedIn if you want, but otherwise don’t waste any mental energy on this old job. They suck, you escaped, don’t get drawn back in.
5. Talking to my boss about time off for a clinical trial
I’m remote at a mostly remote company, and we have unlimited PTO. My team is generally exceptionally supportive about work/life balance in general and taking time off specifically.
Outside of work, I’ll hopefully be participating in a six-month long clinical trial to test a medication’s effectiveness for a diagnosed illness that I have. It’ll involve 10 trips throughout the 6 months to the lab located a 5-6 hour drive away (though I might fly/train). Each of those lab visits can take up to 3 hours per visit. I’m going to try my best to schedule the travel and lab visits on a weekend, but know that’ll be impossible. I am also trying to schedule these visits when I already otherwise have to be in that general direction. (Convenient, but leads me to be worried that it looks like I’m lying when I’m taking a few hours off for a “medical appointment” while my manager knows I’m traveling around those days. It seems shady to have a planned doctors appointment when you’re traveling, right?)
Finally, since I’ll be testing a new medication, I’m worried about being excessively drowsy on it and needing an afternoon crash-out nap — that’s happened before to me on other meds. Or any other unanticipated side effects!
I have my first lab visit coming up (during the workday) and am wondering how to address this and how much to share when I don’t want to talk about the trial specifics at all. This feels like it’s under the banner of receiving medical treatment, but the travel is a bit of a wild card.
You’re traveling for medical treatment; this is sick time like any other medical appointment would be. It’s not that different than if you had to travel to another state to consult with a medical specialist because that’s where the best specialists were located.
You don’t need to explain that you’re doing a trial at all if you’d rather not. You can simply say, “Every few weeks over the next six months, I’m going to need to travel five hours away for a medical treatment, and each of those will probably take up a full day. Do you want me to do anything special for that time, like filing for FMLA for it?” (In fact, even if your boss says you don’t need to use FMLA, consider claiming it anyway, since it protects your job in case anyone makes noises about this down the road.)