is my preferred name too cringy, banning money collections, and more — Ask a Manager

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Here are three updates from past letter-writers.

1. Is my preferred name too cringy to get interviews? (#3 at the link)

I did take the advice I saw from others and changed my resume to show my legal name, and then subtly place my preferred name somewhere else, but I still haven’t found a paying job. However, I did get an internship through my school, and I’m now in the work-based learning program! I’m not going by my preferred name there, but I did tell my boss about it, and she said it was “unprofessional,” which I understood and told her the name I would like to go by (middle name), and she seemed happy with that. I haven’t told my coworkers though, and I’m honestly not 100% sure if I should. I doubt they would care, but I feel like it would be better if it were mentioned in passing by a friend coming in while I’m working or something and calling me my preferred name.

Please make sure to tell everyone that I appreciate all the helpful comments! I loved the support and ideas to make sure people still knew i did go by a different name

2. Should I ban money collections on our team? (#4 at the link)

It’s been more than a year since I’ve been a manager. I wrote in wanting to streamline birthdays and other occasions at work. I had the first department meeting with my team and included this in an overall talk about my expectations.

Basically, that we were all there to make money and they did not need to feel pressured to give to buy gifts for others. That they did not ever need to buy me anything. I did not want them soliciting co-workers for anything: social causes, birthdays, showers, weddings, etc. I would buy a cake and card if anyone wanted to have their birthday acknowledged. (And set up a clipboard to sign up for this.)

The look of relief on most of my team was encouraging. I told them if they had any concerns they could speak to me privately. The only person with a problem was the secretary who had been handling this. She was upset as “giving gifts was her love language” and no one had complained before. (Gifts with other peoples’ money.)

I told her people who aren’t getting gifts may feel slighted. Others can’t afford to keep contributing but may not feel comfortable saying anything. She was teary. I told her she wasn’t doing anything wrong, but I was in charge now, and going forward this is how we’re proceeding.

She wanted to do a Secret Santa so I wanted to be fair and let people vote anonymously on it — and most people said no. I took them all out for a holiday lunch instead.

3. We’re switching to unlimited PTO and I feel cheated (#4 at the link)

I wrote in that my company decided to switch to open PTO and only gave us three weeks’ notice.

The policy is officially “open PTO” and that means it is no longer separated by sick time, vacation time, personal time, etc. I wrote unlimited interchangeably because I think most people understand what unlimited PTO is versus open PTO. I am sorry for the confusion.

Our fiscal year ended on Sept 30 (which was a Monday) and the staff meeting we had to “discuss” the issue was on Sept 10 (a Tuesday). We got the email about the change late the day before. In the meeting, I specifically asked about compensation since, thanks to AAM, I know it was a FY24 expense. I think it never occurred to anyone to pay out the up-to-40 hours for any and all employees. I left the meeting and immediately looked at my schedule to see how many of my remaining hours I was able to take off. I only lost 8 hours at the end.

The update is not that exciting. We did not push back on the timing. I am not sure if any of my colleagues took more time off in September. My company is setting a minimum of 15 days, 5 of which must be consecutive. Many are worried about the line between taking time and abuse, and it was suggested to just take as many as we would have gotten had we been given a set number. I therefore gave myself a raise in my time off, and several others have as well. As long as the work gets done, no one seems to be concerned about too much time abuse. They did clearly state that this does not get paid out if you leave the company. Some of the commenters mentioned that. There are many sucky things about this situation but I think most of us have just accepted it and moved on. It would have been nice to have more of a heads up about the situation. I know they probably didn’t have things confirmed, but even a simple “Hey, we are considering this change to be effective in October so use your days” in July would have been nice. The only other issue I have is that our company wide winter break is not happening. HR acknowledged that there will probably be a lot of PTO being used that week–and that is okay–but as one of the few customer-facing roles, it was nice that everyone was off at the same time, and not just me because I feel like it.

The silver lining for me is that my spouse’s time off schedule is January to December (which is one reason I rolled over 5 days), so at least with it being open, I don’t have to deal with managing our vacation time on two schedules. And when my water meter had to be changed last week, I just took the day off rather than do data entry from home, because it’s not like I needed to work to save a vacation day for an actual vacation.