Hovertext: For reasons related to current research projects, SMBC will be slowly switching over to obscure literary references for the foreseeable future. It's been nice knowing you.
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
A reader writes:
I have been experiencing secondary infertility for the last year and nine months. I have gone through two rounds of IVF since last October, which has meant a lot more time away from work than usual for monitoring appointments, surgical recovery, etc.
I supervise a small team of people at work, and last October (during the first egg retrieval), I decided to tell a couple of people on the team who were most impacted by me being out that I was doing IVF. I have not mentioned anything about infertility or the second egg retrieval, which was earlier this month.
Someone on my team (who I supervise) just came into my office and asked me if I am pregnant. I am assuming that person noticed I have been out more again lately. But I am just aghast. I feel so violated. Whether or not I was experiencing infertility, and whether or not I was pregnant, that question would never feel appropriate.
In the moment, I got very flustered and just said, “No, I am not pregnant.” Now I am stewing about whether to go back and address the comment — or what to do. I feel all kinds of emotions coming up when I think about addressing this myself, and I also want to be sure I am not directing all the emotions of my infertility toward this person in my response.
Was what they did really that bad, or is it something that I opened up space for when sharing about my IVF process? If I address the comment, is it as simple as me saying, “Hey, I was not comfortable with you asking about whether I am pregnant. I will share info about my family building with coworkers as I am ready”?
Context: I am queer and work at a queer-serving organization, so the person may have just thought I was doing IVF because of that rather than infertility. And also, I want to be mindful that while their question was completely not okay with me, I do hold formal power in the situation as their supervisor. Any thoughts or suggestions?
Your first instinct was correct — that question is never appropriate to ask.
Either the person is pregnant and they’ve chosen not to share it yet and so asking is intrusive and puts them on the spot … or they’re not pregnant and potentially upset about that and asking asking is intrusive and hurtful. (Or, just to be thorough, they’re not pregnant and don’t have any particular feelings about that, but asking is still intrusive and also maybe comes across as commentary on their body.) And you did not open up space for any of that when you shared that you’re doing IVF.
The only possible way I can see that your employee wasn’t horribly out of line is if there was some kind of miscommunication — like if she thought there had been an announcement that you were pregnant and she was coming to congratulate you. Although even then, it would have been awkwardly done.
I think you’re right to consider the power differential in how you approach her, but you still have standing to address it — both as the human she intruded on and as her manager since you don’t want her saying anything similar to others at work in the future.
You could simply say this: “I’m not sure what made you ask the other day if I’m pregnant, but please don’t ask anyone that. I know you meant well, but that’s something a pregnant person should share only when they’re ready, and it can be a painful question too.”
She might be embarrassed or even defensive, but it’s a useful message for her to hear.
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
A reader writes:
I work at an up-and-coming, techy, mid-range e-comm company that’s always felt very inclusive, fun, and positive. Most employees are male and between the ages of 25-35, and are prone to ribbing and bets — “grow out your mullet for a year for $1,500,” that type of thing.
One of our employees bears a striking resemblance to the Jesus often portrayed in kid’s Bibles: long wavy brown hair, soft eyes, big beard. Because of this, his unofficial nickname used throughout the company is “Jesus.”
I’m assuming he was involved in a bet of some sort, because today he walked in decked out in full vestments — long white robes, Hebrew embroidered on the chest, sandals, the whole costume. A few people laughed, and he got right to work at his desk.
I’m a fierce proponent of free speech and believe there’s value in cheeky pokes at things we often put on pedestals, like religion. That being said, it seems inappropriate to me to lampoon a religious figure in a work environment. What would you do? Am I being too sensitive?
I answer this question over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here.
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. My mother-in-law manages my sister-in-law and covers up her drunk driving
I am at a complete loss. My mother-in-law (Sally), sister-in-law (Karen), and I work for an AirBnB cleaning management company. Sally is a manager and Karen is a supervisor.
Karen is currently on probation for a DWI. This past month, she has tried to drive me to work drunk or has shown up drunk expecting to drive me home with her without me knowing. I found out both times. And she has been caught drunk and with alcohol at work. Yet Sally won’t terminate her or even stick with any consequences. I want to bring this up to higher-up bosses, but I am worried both will lose their jobs, as well as mine. My sister-in-law has been spoken to by all of family members and lied about being in AA yet drank during that time. Do I call her probation officer? I don’t know.
This is a work issue, but it’s also a family issue. You have a family member who’s regularly driving drunk; that’s a big deal. Someone needs to be sounding the alarm, taking away her keys, doing whatever it takes to get her off the road. Ideally that someone wouldn’t be you as an in-law, but if no one else is stepping up, use whatever power you have to intervene. If that means calling her probation officer, maybe that’s what you do. I don’t love advising that because I don’t think people belong in jail for addictions, but at this point getting her off the road so she doesn’t maim or kill someone has to be your highest priority.
As for the work stuff, yes, tell your bosses if this is happening at work and your mother-in-law is covering for her. I can’t see why that would result in you losing your job (and quite frankly, your mother-in-law should lose hers since she’s been aiding and abetting an employee in driving drunk). But I’d also get the hell out of that company to put some distance between you and the family mess.
Meanwhile, don’t get in a car that Karen is driving, period, even if you don’t think she’s been drinking since it sounds like she tries to hide it.
2. Interviewer said it was “an incredible lapse in judgment” to talk to my network about the company
This has been rumbling about occasionally in the back of my mind. A few years ago, my son-in-law, a new college graduate at the time, was applying for jobs. He learned that someone who had graduated from his small college a couple of years ahead of him and who he knew slightly was working at a company that might be a good fit for him. After applying for a job there and being invited for an interview, he reached out to this contact to find out more about the company. The contact was very warm and open to a conversation, and my son-in-law came out of it feeling like he knew a lot more about the company’s culture and expectations.
During his interview, he mentioned that he had spoken with this person and gave some specific examples about how what he learned helped him feel excited about the company. Well, his interviewer was livid. Apparently, they went off on him railing about how inappropriate it was that he would have reached out to someone other than them for information about the company and that they wouldn’t even consider him for the role given that incredible lapse of judgment. Of course, he was crushed as this was one of his very first interviews after graduation and he felt like he had done something horribly wrong. At the time, I told him he just ran into a bonkers interviewer and that he likely dodged a bullet with the company. Since then, he has happily advanced in his career, but occasionally, I find myself thinking about that interviewer. Were they as off-base as I think?
Yes.
It’s very normal to talk to people in your network about a company you’re interviewing with; in fact, it’s a widely given piece of advice! That interviewer was out of his gourd and sounds like he has some pathological control issues.
3. Random people use our lactation room for breaks and lunch
One other person in my office and I pump at work. We have a designated lactation room, but random non-lactating coworkers keep going in and locking the door to use the room on their regular breaks or to take hour long lunches or sometimes for personal calls. My manager is aware and emails have gone out notifying everyone of the room’s intended purpose, but people just keep doing it.
It wouldn’t be that big of a deal to me if it was a rare occurrence, but it’s multiple times a week, sometimes over several hours that every time I go to access the room someone is locked in there using the space for something other than pumping. Unfortunately I don’t have time to just stand outside the door and wait to be next, so the result is that I am sometimes missing pumping sessions entirely. Is this really the best I am entitled to?
In fact it is not! Federal law requires your employer to provide you with a private space to pump “as frequently as needed” and specifically says, “If the space is not dedicated to the nursing employees’ use, it must be available when the employee needs it in order to meet the statutory requirement.” If the room isn’t available when you need it, your employer is violating the law.
Go to whoever is in charge of this sort of thing in your office and say this: “We need a different place to pump. Legally, we’re required to provide a pumping space that’s available whenever needed, and right now people keep using the lactation room to nap or eat or take personal calls. So we need another space that locks and is reliably available, and we need it right away.” Any reasonable employer will hear that and start enforcing the room’s availability to you — but you’re not telling them how to solve the problem, just letting them know that they’re not currently meeting their legal requirements so they’re on notice that they need to fix it.
4. Am I wrong for being annoyed when interviewers ask about my first career?
Seven years ago I graduated from a Ph.D. program in a highly competitive field. Staying in this field would have resulted in a six-figure salary straight out of my program, but I knew the work would not make me happy. I decided to go back to nonprofit work, which was my profession before pursuing a Ph.D. and work I still felt very passionate about. When I was interviewing, several interviewers asked about my career shift, with one of them stating something along the lines of, “Why would you want to switch from a high-paying career to this work?” These questions always rubbed me the wrong way. I don’t mind explaining why my old field was a bad fit and why nonprofit work felt like a calling for me. But I felt like there was an assumption that professional choices should be money-driven and a judgment that the jobs I was interviewing for were not worthwhile for someone who had more lucrative options.
I ended up picking a nonprofit job directly related to my Ph.D. During the two years I’ve worked there, I have been through some major upheaval in my personal life and found a new field I feel passionate about. I went back to graduate school to gain a degree needed to practice in this field. The transition is not completely out of whack; it’s not a straight career path, but also not completely out of left field either.
It is now seven years since I graduated from my Ph.D. program and three years since I started my graduate degree. I am about to graduate and am interviewing for jobs. In an interviews I was again asked three questions regarding this being a second career for me (the first question was asking me to explain the shift; the two other were about my ability to transition into the new field). The questions irked me. I felt weird about being asked about a program I graduated from seven years ago, as opposed to my more recent and more relevant work experience. I had an issue with the way the interviewer framed my Ph.D. training as requiring a completely different skill set than the field I am currently in, since I use my research skills on a daily basis in my new field. I felt like I needed to defend my switch and that my training was treated as a liability instead of an asset. Overall, these questions left a bitter taste in my mouth. I ended up spending at least half of the interview talking about my Ph.D. training and not my recent work experience that was more relevant to this role.
Am I wrong in feeling strange about these questions and seeing them as yellow or red flags? Is there a response to these questions that does not come off as evasive but doesn’t dwell on a part of my career that feels ancient? I should say that in other job interviews, my Ph.D. training was seen as an asset and a testament to my skills and the issue of a second career did not come up. All of the questions were focused on my current field and experience.
I think you’re overreacting to a single interview, since this hasn’t come up in your other interviews. That said, that interviewer’s questions weren’t particularly odd or out of bounds; it’s reasonable to ask what drove shifts in your work history (and seven years ago isn’t that long go, especially when you’re now entering a new field), and it’s reasonable for an interviewer to want to probe a little into how you’ll do with the transition.
I think you similarly read too much into the questions years back about why you’d want to leave a high-paying career for a lower-paying one. It’s reasonable for employers to want to understand what’s motivating you to leave a high-paying field for a much lower-paying one and to make sure that you’ve really thought through what that will entail. They don’t want to invest in you if you’re going to realize four months in that it’s not for you — and believe me, nonprofits deal all the time with people who don’t quite realize what the shift in pay and resources will be like. None of this is personal.
(Any chance you’re feeling any weirdness yourself about the shifts you’ve made? I’m asking because this sounds like a pretty defensive reaction to fairly common interview discussions.)
5. What are post-interview “HR hurdles”?
I am trying to return to the workforce after two years of being home with my kids. I’ve been applying to jobs, and have had a couple interviews at different places. I am very interested in one job and emailed two weeks after our interview to check on the status. I got a quick reply saying that there are some HR hurdles they are working to resolve. I know there must be a lot of possibilities here, but I was wondering if you could share some common HR issues that can hold up the interview/hiring process.
Tons of possibilities! Some examples: A question was raised about the right salary range and they’re figuring that out. There’s a question about whether the budget for the role will be approved. Someone else on that team might be leaving and their role would be a higher priority if so. Someone else on the team is leaving and they might reconfigure both roles. They’re not sure they even need this role at all in its current configuration. Do they actually need someone who speaks Spanish? An internal candidate might be interested. And on and on.
When the Tropicana opened in 1957, it was the "Tiffany of the Strip," complete with showgirl revues, mob deals and James Bond. It will be demolished in October to build a new home for the Oakland A's.
First, the best news! Tina earned a huge promotion to a different department a couple of weeks after you published my letter. She’s now an AVP for retail sales strategy. It came with a big raise, annual bonus, and an extra two weeks of PTO. I still chuckle when I think how much more money we are paying her than if we would have just given her the 5 on her performance review. I’m glad she’s out of our area though; this is a better fit where she can get a fresh start with new people. We still work on the same campus and get lunch together sometimes.
As for me, I hate to admit it but I’m having a much better time since Tina left. I no longer have to deal with Dave’s constant complaints and Jen has proven to be a competent colleague now that Tina is out of the picture. I’m trying to move on and foster a good (if cautious) working relationship with Jen.
Unfortunately Dave is still targeting Tina. A nasty rumor that she was fired started up right after she left. I was able to shut it down but shortly after that rumor was quashed, Tina let me know that Dave had suddenly tried to follow or connect with her on every social media account she had. She declined and blocked him but then kept getting a stranger every couple of days doing the same things. She believes it’s Dave and had to lock down all her social media accounts. I don’t know why he is still so weirdly fixated on her.
Before Tina’s promotion, Mike announced he was leaving for another company and introduced his replacement, “Maria.” In a weird way that made me feel better since if he’s had a foot out the door then his cavalier attitude makes more sense. Then in early March Hank the VP left quite suddenly with no one lined up in the role. The rumors are wild but I have no idea what happened.
Maria has a fierce, no-nonsense leadership style that’s helped the department improve drastically. Jen’s really taken to her as well and has put some distance between herself and Dave. I didn’t realize Jen was an analyst with Dave for eight years and was newly promoted just before Tina was transferred. She’s since learned she has to put managing Dave ahead of their prior friendship. Maria’s also helped me learn how to better navigate personality-based feedback and see my missteps. I passed on a lot of Dave’s complaints anonymously to Tina before I confirmed they were false. I rushed off to Tina with Jen’s feedback and didn’t take the time to understand the background. I’ve learned a lot and will do better going forward.
As I finish-up a new Macintosh video, I'm releasing the "lost" first episode of The Denfield Hoard to celebrate #marchintosh I started this series by discussing the many input devices that I found in the hoard. Originally a Patreon exclusive, it has been there for awhile, so time for a public release.
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Crypto mogul and former CEO of FTX Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison for defrauding hundreds of thousands of customers, leaving investors and lenders short by more than $11 billion. What do you think?
perhaps the idea that being absent for 14-18 school days over the course of the entire year counts as “chronic absenteeism” has something to do with it?
that the proportional increase is highest in the richest districts should indicate that this is less “struggle” and more “everyone has realized your standards are bullshit”
“Trump’s newest venture? A $60 Bible. His Bible sales pitch comes as he appears to be confronting a significant financial squeeze, with his legal fees growing while he fights a number of criminal cases and lawsuits.” — New York Times
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Genesis Adam calls his banishment from the garden “very unfair.”
Exodus Moses descends Mount Sinai with the Second Amendment.
Leviticus The part about not eating bacon is out. The part about not “lying with another male” stays in.
Numbers Moses takes a census in order to divide the Israelites into “total losers” and “good friends.”
Judges All nine go GOP.
1 Samuel Goliath wins.
2 Samuel Bathsheba is even hotter. David moves on her.
Job Donald Job Trump perseveres despite the nation stealing his election and the courts taking all his money.
Jeb A hypocrite continually embarrasses himself, his state, and his family and is terrible on Face the Nation.
Acts Paul doesn’t waste his time in the blue countries.
2 Corinthians Forever called “Two Corinthians” (not “Second Corinthians”).
Gospel According to Matthew Cut (boring)
Gospel According to Mark Cut (too woke)
Gospel According to Luke Cut (overrated)
Gospel According to John Trump is issued a gag order. He wears a MAGA crown of thorns and heroically carries his cross until the crowds overwhelmingly demand he be exonerated and granted immunity.
Revelation The apocalypse comes, but only for those who voted for Biden and Swifties.
“Romances have a setting; I had only intervened to place myself well. Mainly, I spotted the precise trouble of being a woman ahead of time, tried to surf it instead of letting it drown me on principle. I had grown bored of discussions of fair and unfair, equal or unequal, and preferred instead to consider a thing called ease.” — from the essay “The Case for Marrying an Older Man” by Grazie Sophia Christie, published in The Cut (3/27/24)
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Sometimes, on a dewy summer evening, when I am standing on the balcony of my storybook castle in the deep and scary woods, I almost can’t believe my luck. And yet, it isn’t luck that brought me here, but a series of intelligent decisions—decisions any woman would be advised to make if she wants to live a life as enchanted and carefree as mine. For while the women of the village are scrubbing pots and eating cabbage and hanging their clothes out on a sad little string, I am over here enjoying a nonstop happy ending, all because I did the wise thing and married a prince who was turned into a beast by a witch and then transformed back again.
When people learn how we got together, they are sometimes judgmental. Passing a gaggle of milkmaids in my carriage, I often catch whispers of “You know she was just seventeen when they met” and “Did you hear he held her hostage in his castle in exchange for her father’s freedom?” For some reason, they insist on seeing me as a victim in this scenario, probably because they are kicking themselves for not snagging a cursed bipedal wildebeest with a giant inheritance when they had the chance. Instead, they are sleeping on lumpy beds in dumb cottages and praying Gaston will wink at them. Meanwhile, I have a house full of doting servants who joyfully attend to my every whim because they are all so grateful not to be plates and candles anymore. This is the life I have always wanted, and I got it by being smart.
Every marriage is a bargain. Perhaps the woman is a good cook with soft skin, a slender waist, a fertile womb, and lots of cows, and in exchange, the man will protect her from being attacked by worse men. I can’t help but think, however, that there is no better deal than marrying a prince who was turned into a beast by a witch and then transformed back again. When I see the married women of the village, I feel a pang of sympathy because I know that they will never be truly appreciated. They may give their husband endless devotion and five to ten children, but the one thing they cannot give him is the lifting of a cruel curse that had rendered him a bitter, disfigured hermit with no hope of ever finding love. This is why if you have the choice between marrying a normal man and one who has been turned into a beast by a witch, you should choose the latter every time.
Some village wenches will claim that through a committed relationship, a man may change and grow. But no woman can change a man unless she is a witch dressed up as a beggar with magical powers and a heart full of spite. This is why the only way for a woman to secure a good life is to find an angry monster in a deserted castle and fall in love with him. Seeing the contrast between her youth and beauty and his furry face and under-bite, he will be overcome with gratitude that she was able to look past his condition and love the man inside. And once the curse is lifted and he transforms back into a handsome, wealthy prince, he will continue loving her forever. Probably.
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