I’m on vacation. Here are some past letters that I’m making new again, rather than leaving them to wilt in the archives.
1. I have regular happy hours with only one of my staff members
I manage a specialty niche team of four within a larger department that otherwise doesn’t have specific teams. My direct reports are the only ones in the department who only report to one manager (me). Last year, I hired someone I knew from a previous job, let’s call her Mary, where we were at the same level, but now she reports to me. I am a happy hour aficionado, and regularly host happy hours for my staff where they are all invited (with no pressure to attend) and I pay for everything, maybe once or twice a month. These happy hours are billed as “unnecessary calorie hour,” because the goal is to focus on spending time outside work together in a less formal environment, not drinking alcohol. I do drink at these events, and historically, people who don’t drink have most often chosen not to come, whether they don’t drink for religious reasons or because they have a long drive home.
Increasingly, these invitations are only accepted by Mary, so we end up spending significantly more time together outside work than I spend with the others on my team. This isn’t a problem for me and I enjoy these outings, but I worry that the perception among the others on the team is that Mary gets special one-on-one time with me because she is my “drinking buddy.” I would be thrilled if others would attend and interact with me on a more personal level more regularly, but I also respect their off-work time and would never pressure them to hang out when they’d rather be doing something else. Mary definitely gets more of my attention because she chooses to join me at happy hour, and while it isn’t directly due to our prior relationship, I fear that it’s being perceived that way. But I want to keep doing happy hour because I really enjoy it! Since this is becoming less of a group-accepted kind of event, should I just stop doing it?
Yes, you should stop doing it. Regardless of your intent, the effect is that you’re having regular one-on-one social hang-outs with one of your employees, which can cause all sorts of problems with real or perceived favoritism. I get that it’s fun and so you’d rather keep doing it, but your responsibilities as a manager trump that.
If you want to keep having happy hours with colleagues, focus on organizing them with people who don’t work for you.
– 2017
2. My coworkers complain I’m not as fast as my predecessor
Two months ago, I received a promotion from a support position in a low-revenue department to a support position in a high-revenue department. The position had been unoccupied for a month and was previously held by a very nice and very helpful gal for a little less than a year.
I do not have a direct manager (just someone “over me” for administrative purposes who is willing to look over my work if I ask her to) and no one else in my office knows how to do most of my job duties, so I have mostly had to train myself. I am a one-person department. Everyone else in the department was laid off several months ago. They are working to hire a new manager, but it will be an outside hire. They are looking for someone with experience in the field but obviously they won’t know our systems or processes.
The problem is, I am constantly being compared to the gal who previously held my position. I’m constantly hearing “Katie was able to do this a lot faster” or “Katie could pull this report” and other things along those lines. (I hear this from coworkers but not from higher-ups.) How do I handle a situation like this? I really love my job and my employer but I’m concerned that I’m doing a terrible job.
People are astonished that you’re not performing at the level of your predecessor when you’re had no training and your whole department has been laid off? These people … are not very insightful.
Ideally a manager would be telling them to knock it off and pointing out that’s it ridiculous to expect you to perform like Katie when you’re brand new and have had no training or support. Since there’s no manager, you’ll need to do some of this explaining yourself. It’s going to be tricky because you don’t want to sound defensive … but the next time someone makes one of these comments try saying, “I’m sure she was. I want to be up-front with you that I’m still figuring this out. With the rest of the department laid off and no one here to train me, I’ve been having to figure this out as I go. If there are specific things you’d like me to do differently, please tell me! I’d welcome any specific input you have.”
Also — is there anyone else in your organization who does work that’s at all similar? Even if no one else is doing the same thing you are, there might be people doing work that’s similar enough that you could pick their brains or get some training from them.
– 2017
3. Urging my severely diabetic coworker to get treatment
This morning a coworker informed us she would no longer be buying candy for the department because her tests came back that she has diabetes. I gently inquired if she received her A1C, not intending to inquire the actual number, and it came to light that the A1C converted to an average of 450 mmg/doL blood glucose. Using the American Diabetes Professional conversion calculator, that’s an A1C of 17.3. A diabetes diagnosis is made when a person has two A1Cs of 6.5 or greater in a row.
She says she’s going to try to control it with a ketogenic diet (which she admits will be challenging) and I asked if she was working with a dietitian and she said no. I asked if “they” (meaning her doctors), put her on insulin and she admitted she didn’t see a doctor. She ordered the blood tests herself and has self-diagnosed diabetes.
Not realizing how seriously her glucose was out of control, I simply encouraged her to test her blood sugar so she would know where she was and how her body handled her diet. (I am also aware of the risk of ketoacidosis.) She lamented the cost of test strips and when I mentioned that if she got a prescription for the strips, insurance would cover it. Then it came out that she hasn’t seen a doctor since the early 2000s and seems to have some baggage about seeing one.
After mentioning her glucose reading to a MD friend, he said he’d hospitalize her with insulin treatment if she were his patient, and said that a diabetic coma can occur at 500 mmg/doL. So apparently her diabetes is really severe and I’m concerned that she doesn’t realize how bad her health has gotten. I want to encourage her to see a doctor for treatment, but I feel out of place. You and your readers are awesome about phrasing things and I hope you can come through for me on this. We have a good rapport, but we don’t have a lot in common over which we’ve bonded. I’d like to handle this with kid gloves so she doesn’t shut down the topic altogether.
“I don’t want to pry into your medical situation, so I won’t bring this up again — but I know a bit about diabetes and the blood sugar level you mentioned is considered extremely serious. I believe a doctor would tell you that you’re in serious and possibly immediate danger if you don’t get medical treatment right away. Again, I don’t want to butt in and I won’t continue to raise this, but I’m worried about you and want to make sure you know that the numbers you saw are a really big deal and you might not have a lot of time to wait to see a doctor.”
At that point, you’ll have given her the information she needs, and it’ll be up to her what she does with it — so do stick to not asking about it again after that unless she brings it up.
– 2017
Read an update to this letter here.
4. Company wants to call me for an “informal chat”
A few days after submitting an application for an open position at a major company in my city, I received an email from their HR saying that they would call me within one or two weeks for an “informal chat.” They couldn’t say when exactly they would call, but I didn’t need to worry about it because it was not an interview and if I was not available at the time they called, I could return it.
I’m confused by what this means. They say it’s not an interview, but if they get the impression from this call that I’m not a good fit, I will be disqualified as a candidate. How should I prepare for this? Do you have any tips for these “informal chats”?
Prepare for it as if it’s a formal interview. It might be one! Some employers are weird about this and like to make early stages of their hiring process sound more informal than they really are. “We’ll just have a conversation!” “Come in and get to know us!” But from the candidate’s side, those things are usually interviews, and you should prepare the same way you would if they were calling it that.
Occasionally it really is something less formal. It’s possible that they just want to tell you about the job and see if you’re still interested and/or learn a little about you. Even then, the best thing is to prepare the same way you would for an interview. Be familiar with the company and the job posting, and be ready to talk about yourself, your experience, and your interests. You might end up being over-prepared, but that’s better than being under-prepared.
(Also, companies: Stop doing this. No matter how informal these conversations are, they’re interviews. They’re part of your assessment process, after all. Call them interviews. You are confusing candidates. And schedule them for an actual time, not “we’ll call sometime in the next two weeks.”)
– 2019
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