Ask a Manager

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. Should I check on my boss when she’s late to work?

I have autism and this falls into the realm of social norms that I struggle to navigate. My department is made up of just my supervisor and myself. We’re in public-facing roles and our office is open 12 hours a day, so we alternate shifts. Each day one of us opens and one of us comes in four hours later and then closes for the day.

On the days my supervisor closes, she sometimes comes in late with no notice. I’m currently sitting at my desk wondering if I should check in with her because she was supposed to be here 45 minutes ago. She’s in her late 60s and lives alone, so it’s not outside the realm of possibility that something could have happened and I’d be the only person to realize it. She’s a bit prickly and guards her personal time carefully, though, so I don’t want to intrude if she’s just choosing to sleep in or run an errand on the way to the office. When I’ve made comments to her in the past about wondering if I should have texted her to make sure everything is okay, she has brushed it off and seemed annoyed so I let it go.

At what point is it my responsibility to make sure she’s okay? I don’t want to reach out to her manager because I don’t want to get her in trouble. She’s really good at her job and is the sort of person who never stops working once she’s here so I don’t think it’s a big deal for her to come in a bit late. It doesn’t impact my ability to get my job done. I just don’t know the etiquette around checking up on her when she’s not here.

It’s not your responsibility to make sure she’s okay if she’s just an hour or two late, and because you know she has a pattern of sometimes coming in late without notice, it doesn’t need to set off alarm bells when she does it. (That would be true regardless, but it goes double because she’s seemed annoyed when you’ve inquired in the past.)

So from this point forward, assume all is fine unless it’s close to the end of your shift (like within an hour) and she’s not there; it doesn’t sound like she’s typically that late and so that would be an aberration that you could treat differently (plus, it raises a looming coverage issue that you’d be right to flag).

2. My staff wants me to attend events with them — but it’s not my job

I am a manager of primarily part-time staff. They are the outreach team, and I oversee outreach in addition to a bunch of other duties. My problem is that I seem to have done too good a job making them feel like they’re my first priority, because during the mid-year check-in (which was done by anonymous survey), multiple staff complained that I am not doing enough to support them because I am not actively attending outreach events like they do.

I check in periodically but I don’t spend the whole four-hour shift with them — probably only about a half hour as I do rounds, check in, and see if they need anything, etc. But the thing is, it’s absolutely NOT my job to actively participate in the outreach events. That would amount to about 20 hours of my work week, which simply is not feasible considering my other responsibilities. But everything I try to think of how to phrase “it’s not my job to do that” it’s feels like a deflection or like I’m trying not avoid taking ownership.

How do I handle this? I’m thinking of just printing my list of job duties and sharing it but that feels passive aggressive. Help!

I think your opening for this conversation will be easier if you focus more on the fact that they feel unsupported and less on the specific thing they’re proposing as a solution to that. Talk with each of them and say you’ve received the feedback that people would feel more supported if you attended more outreach events, explain you can’t do that because you’re also charged with doing XYZ and your job is specifically designed not to include time for attending events so you can handle other priorities, and ask if they can brainstorm with you about other ways for them to get the support that currently feels lacking.

If it’s literally just a matter of wanting you at events and they don’t really feel unsupported beyond that, this conversation will bring that out — and hopefully help them understand why you can’t do that. But it’s possible that you’ll hear they wanted you at more events because, I don’t know, the public asks questions that they don’t know how to answer, or there’s not enough coverage for them to leave their booth for bathroom breaks, or who knows what. They might be thinking the solution is “we need Jane here more often,” whereas you might have a dozen other ways you can solve those problems once you know they exist. Either way, approaching it as if the problem is “people feel unsupported” and not just “they want me there too much” should make it easier to solve.

3. My colleague is using parts of my resume as their own

I used to work for one of the agencies that the current administration has gutted. It was a great place to work and many employees stayed there for a long time, so they haven’t been on the job market in a while.

My field is small, so I shared my resume with any old coworkers who asked in the hopes that it’d help them get their resumes up-to-date. One former coworker openly told me they stole my formatting and alluded to copying things like the awards, too! I was too shocked to say anything, but I wish I had, because I don’t know the extent to which they ripped off my work.

Now my agency is up on the chopping block and in this small field, I’m inevitably applying to the same places they are. I have asked to see their resume, but they demurred, instead offering generic job search tips. While I know there are only so many ways you can format a resume, I don’t know if I’m applying to places that have already seen “my” resume (whether just format or contents as well), I don’t even know if the former coworker bothered to change the typeface! Do I need to rebuild my resume from scratch? What would you do here?

Their copying your formatting is no big deal — people copy other resumes’ formatting all the time and that’s not going to set off any alarm bells for an employer and it’s definitely not going to make them think they’ve already seen “your” resume before. But if they’re listing awards that they didn’t receive, that’s wildly unethical! It still doesn’t mean that you need to somehow rebuild your resume to avoid having similar content (and presumably more than one person can receive those awards over time) but if your coworker is directly competing with you for jobs, claiming your accomplishments as their own would be extra awful.

As for what to do, don’t worry about the formatting at all, but you could go back to them and say, “Hey, when you said you copied my awards, do you mean you claimed awards that you didn’t actually receive? If so, can you correct that for both our sakes? You could end up having a job offer pulled over it once they do a background check, and I of course didn’t show you my resume intending for you to copy the actual content.” If you want, you could add, “And I don’t appreciate you doing that when we’re applying for the same positions.”

4. Airline mix-up means I’m missing my first day of work

I am out of state, and the airline had a mix-up with my ticket. I am set to start work Monday at a new job and now I can’t fly back home until Monday. No other option. What is the likelihood that they will “fire” me before I even start due to this? I have left a voicemail explaining the situation to my new supervisor already, but I’m worried.

I didn’t get this in time to answer it before Monday but: they’re not likely to tell you “never mind then” just because of an airline snafu. Stuff happens. Decent employers know that.

Exceptions to this would be if you had already seemed flaky to them before now and this was a final straw moment, like you had already rescheduled multiple interviews with little notice, or if you’d already asked to push your start date back a couple of times.

(That said, I admit to being curious about what “the airline had a mix-up with my ticket” means! If it was their mistake, I’d think you could push pretty hard for them to find you a seat on another airline — but by the time this is publishing, it will be past the point where that would be helpful.)

5. How to list contractor to employee on your resume

I’ve recently gotten a new job and started as an employee after a few months as a contractor. As a contractor, I was employed through a completely different staffing company. I have the same title, team, and responsibilities, but now I’m employed directly through the company. I’m not sure how to list that on my resume, if only because I’m pretty sure the staffing company would probably have to be the one to verify employment, etc, during that time. I’m not planning on job searching anytime son, but I like to keep my resume up to date.

I would do it like this:

Taco Institute, Taco Strategy Coordinator, July 2024 – present
(contracted through Tasty Foods Contracting July – November 2024, then converted to employee)
* accomplishment
* accomplishment
* accomplishment

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. My boss was upset I wanted to leave when our A/C failed

Last year, my coworker spent the majority of an eight-hour Saturday shift in a public building with no operable bathroom. She reported a sewage backup to our boss and the answering service of the facilities department responsible for maintaining the toilets, but her calls for help went unanswered.

This was on my mind last Saturday, when our building’s A/C failed. I put in the same calls, but the only response I got was my boss asking me to let her know if it gets any hotter. A little before noon, I texted back: “It’s hotter! If help is on the way, let me know. Because otherwise, I am not going to come back from my lunch break. It’s just too hot to finish out my shift.”

My boss called back and told me that if I did not come back from lunch, others would almost certainly follow until there would not be enough staff to keep the building open. And also, she could not even start the approval process to close the building until the temperature rose another five degrees, a temperature that represents an OSHA violation. So I had to come back from lunch to finish my shift.

I appreciate the tough position she is in, and I get that the most expedient way for her to do her job is to demand that I do mine. But my job involves air conditioning! And the last time a similar situation happened, she left my coworker stranded! As far as I know, she did not even try to summon help or start the building failure approval process even though the situation then was much more dire.

In the end, a repairman did arrive and cool us down so I was able to happily finish my shift. But my boss is very unhappy because I threatened to leave. Was there a better way for me to handle this?

It’s hard to know without knowing what kind of temperatures we’re talking about. OSHA doesn’t require specific temperatures, but they do recommend 68-76° F — so if your boss was saying she couldn’t close the building until it got to 77° … well, that doesn’t seem that outrageous (in fact, 78° is supposedly the best eco-friendly thermostat setpoint in the summer). That said, temperature is very personal (my husband might expire at that temperature) and if you’re too hot to comfortably work, you’re too hot to comfortably work, and explaining that wasn’t out of line.

Ultimately I think it really depends on (a) how much of your concern was based on knowing no one had been responsive to your coworker’s bathroom situation last year and worrying this would be the same, versus (b) your actual temperature/level of discomfort. If your concern was the former rather than the latter, telling your boss that you didn’t plan to come back from lunch based on something you feared might happen but hadn’t actually happened yet was overkill … although in that case it would have been fine to say, “There’s a point where it won’t be feasible for people to stay and work, so if that happens we’ll need to leave early.”

But either way, your boss being “very unhappy” over this is a bit much.

2. Does board member’s comment mean I’m about to get a big raise?

I work in a nonprofit where the staff and the board really get along and generally have friendly relationships. Tonight, I ran into a member of the executive committee at my nephew’s track meet. She’s a realtor by trade, and while we were chatting, she said, “So, you’ve been in this city for a while, have you thought about buying a house?” I laughed and basically said, “You know what my salary is. What are you on and can I have some?” Her response was something cryptic about waiting for review season.

Now, my boss had recently mentioned something about moving me from an associate in my department to potentially leading a small team, which I assumed would come with a pay bump, but definitely not one that moves me from “my car is 15 years old and I’m dreading the day it bites it” territory to “able to afford a house” territory.

On one hand, this is great news. On the other, this was a cryptic suggestion about a number that is probably not official yet, and I have no idea if what I’m even imagining she means is what she actually means (like most cities, it costs a lot less to get a house in some parts than others). So my question is, how do I not get too attached to this idea? I’m afraid that she’s set my hopes too high and my new number won’t measure up. Or maybe things change and I don’t get the promotion after all. Before this conversation, I was perfectly happy at the salary I’m at for the job that I do in the city where I live. Now I’m just anxious. Please help!

Put it out of your head entirely. There’s a decent chance that she was speaking to you as a real estate agent rather than a board member, and real estate agents like to encourage people to buy property. “Wait until review season” does not necessarily mean “you are about to get an enormous pay bump that will put buying a house within reach.” It could just mean “maybe you’ll get a raise, but I have no idea whether that will change anything meaningful about your ability to buy property” (as she doesn’t know your expenses, whether you have a partner whose income will go toward a house too, etc.) … or it could be a semi-uncomfortable “yeah, our salaries are low, hopefully you’ll get a bump soon” … or it could mean nothing at all and just be a pleasant nicety with no meaning attached to it. Frankly, she shouldn’t be intimating anything about any potential raise outside of official channels, and there’s a good chance that she didn’t mean to for you to take her remark as seriously as you did (even though it’s understandable that you did!).

That could all turn out to be wrong, of course. Maybe you’re about to get a huge raise! But you’re much better off attributing no meaning to her comment, and then letting it be a happy surprise if that does happen.

3. When a beloved figure is laid off, is fan outcry helpful or hurtful?

I’m hoping to hear your take on a situation from my doll collecting hobby. Mattel and Barbie are some of the biggest names in this space, and in a recent round of Mattel layoffs, a beloved Barbie doll designer named Bill Greening was included. The community reaction was immediate — people were sharing corporate contact information, people declaring on social media they wouldn’t add to their collection unless he was reinstated, etc. There’s even a change.org petition to get him rehired with 2,600 signatures.

I know that fan-related businesses come with a whole series of unique challenges, but collector dolls are a relatively small piece of Mattel’s business. Obviously there’s a lot going on over there the community isn’t privy to — there were over 100 employees laid off, but Bill is the one with the active community relationships that have rallied in support. In your opinion, is this community outrage likely to be more helpful or hurtful for Greening’s future employment opportunities, either with Mattel or with another toy company? If this is hurtful, can you think of positive ways for the community to support him?

I don’t know enough about the situation to comment with any nuance, but in general this kind of thing doesn’t tend to hurt people’s future ability to get hired and can sometimes help, by demonstrating community enthusiasm for the person and creating an opening for another company to capitalize on that fan base. It’s unlikely that the original employer will reinstate him based on the outrage (and presumably they were aware of his fan base before deciding to lay him off) but it’s not out of the realm of possibility either. (Although if you were Bill, would you go back if they offered? If they did offer, though, he’d be in a good position to try to negotiate something extra out of it.)

4. I’m applying for a job at my husband’s company — when should I mention it?

I received an interview request today for a position I’m very interested in — at my husband’s employer. He’s been there going on 13 years, and one of the reasons I applied for the role in the first place is the positive experience he’s had as an employee there.

The position I applied for is completely unrelated to what he does, and we wouldn’t even be working in the same office building (or in the same town, for that matter — the company has a pretty substantial presence in our area). But my home address is on my resume, and one of the first things that pops up when you Google either of our names is our wedding announcement.

Do I mention anything during the initial interview? I’m not trying to hide anything from the interviewer, but it also doesn’t feel like it would be super helpful to volunteer information about my spouse when it might not be necessary. Complicating things slightly is the fact that the role I’m applying for is within HR.

If the job wasn’t in HR, I’d say to bring it up at the offer stage — as a sort of covering-your-bases FYI, so that it doesn’t look weird that you never mentioned it and in case they have any policies that would make that a problem (which is unlikely given the very separate jobs, but it’s better to find out before accepting if they do).

But with the job being in HR, you should mention it earlier, since being in HR increases the chances that it might be something they wouldn’t allow. Given that, I’d mention it in the first interview so that you don’t waste your time if it’s a no-go, framed as, “I wanted to mention my spouse works in the X division. I don’t foresee that being an issue for us, but since the job is in HR, I want to flag it now in case that would pose any concerns for you.”

5. “Couldn’t care less” vs. “could care less”

This isn’t an office question but more of a clarification. I have several times noticed letter writers using the phrase “could care less.” I was under the impression it should be “couldn’t care less” because that announces that I am at the lowest level of caring. By saying somebody “could care less,” it means they are not quite at rock bottom, but I don’t think that is the message the writer is trying to convey. Am I wrong?

You are correct; the expression is properly “couldn’t care less,” for the reason you said. However, the scone is out of the barn on that one; “could care less” has been used for so long that in practice they’ve become interchangeable. (Here is Merriam-Webster agreeing with me.)