This post, did I spread gossip about my boss, company-branded clothing doesn’t fit me, and more , was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. Should I have stayed quiet about the reason our chair was demoted?
I am a high school Social Studies teacher and have been at the same school for the past nine years. My department chair, “Dan,” has been chair almost that entire time, is a micromanager, and most of the department dislikes him.
About six weeks into this school year, he announced at our department meeting that he would be stepping down and an assistant principal would be covering the chair position. I think everyone was slack-jawed and as soon as the meeting ended, the teachers stayed behind to talk. We could not figure out what Dan must have done that was bad enough to lose a chair position effective immediately but not to get fired. Our bets were on mishandling money.
I didn’t run into Dan one-on-one until several days later after school. I awkwardly said I hoped he was doing okay, and Dan, clearly upset, began rambling. Eventually he said the reason — he said the n-word in front of students. I told my two closest work friends the next day what Dan had said.
Not too long after, I felt guilty that I was enjoying seeing the downfall of my boss. If I respected him, I would have kept this information to myself. There was a definite glee that I and others were taking in this. Yet on the other hand, I think if other people find out that you are racist, you should bear consequences for it. It took only a matter of days before the entire school faculty knew. Should I have held my tongue?
I will note that about a month later, I found out that Dan told at least two other people the story, not just me, so we (and he) will never know how the story got out to everyone. But for a solid month I believed that I was the only person he told and I therefore must have been the one to spread it like wildfire.
I don’t know, I think there’s value in people knowing what happened. The rest of you arguably have a professional interest in knowing the department chair used a racial slur and how the school handled it. I’m sure some of the interest in talking about it was gossipy, but that doesn’t make the entire discussion illegitimate.
This stuff tends to get out one way or another, and that’s usually better than having rampant speculation anyway. It also sounds like Dan was telling multiple people, and he didn’t ask you to keep it to yourself. In general, if someone you’re not close to tells you something like this, it’s not unreasonable to assume they’re talking about it to others too.
2. We were offered company-branded clothing … in sizes that don’t fit me
On a Friday, the CEO of my company announced that we were all getting fleece vests with the company logo embroidered on them. I mean I’d rather have the 401K matching he did away with in 2020 back. Or the second designer he’s been promising me for 10 months so I’m not the only designer on staff, who is also juggling engineering and manual writing. But sure, a vest. That’s cool.
“We have them in small, medium, and large.” Oh. The problem is that I’m fat. (I know some people think of that word as an insult, I’ve embraced it, my body is my body, and it’s just my body. Not me.) A large has no hope of fitting me. An XL I could at least wear open and not look like Chris Farley in Tommy Boy, but if we’re talking zip it up, a XXL would be needed.
We were supposed to go pick up our vests from the office today. I talked to our “HR person” (we don’t really have HR, one of a myriad of reasons I’m looking elsewhere) yesterday and asked if it was okay I didn’t pick up a vest as 1) I wanted to prepare for a meeting that was scheduled right after the pick up window and 2) I wasn’t comfortable driving 30 minutes each way to pick up a vest I couldn’t use.
“Why can’t you use it?” Which left me in the horribly awkward position of typing out in a Teams chat, to a coworker who I am somewhat friends with and have socialized with outside of work, “David, it won’t fit me.”
I know that I am not the one who should feel awkward here. But I’ve worked very hard for the past decade to overcome my coming of age in the ultra low rise jean era, when girls who wore a size 00 would sob in dressing rooms because they felt fat. This makes me want to shrink into myself, to hide in baggy sweatshirts, roll my shoulders in, and cross my arms so I’m taking up as little physical space as possible. I thought I was past most of that, but I guess not.
Am I wrong to be annoyed by this? I’m not angry exactly, just annoyed that they excluded a huge fraction of the general American population by not ordering above a large, and that I had to spell it out so explicitly. I don’t want my personal baggage clouding things. And if I’m not wrong, how can I address this in a productive manner so that in the future they either steer clear of clothing, or ask people what sizes would be useful?
Ugh, I don’t know why this still happens or how people are unaware that three sizes won’t cover everyone. You are not wrong to be annoyed by it; it’s thoughtless and out-of-touch.
I would say it this way: “There’s a huge range of body sizes and just ordering S, M, and L will leave out a lot of people. If we’re going to order clothing again, can you ensure a fuller range of sizes are available so people aren’t left out? It’s really uncomfortable to have to explain that what you’re providing won’t fit my body.”
3. I keep running out of work at my new job
I am a little under a month into a new job and so far I’m loving it, but I have terrible workplace anxiety. I find myself struggling when I have free time during the workday because I don’t necessarily know what needs to be done (I complete projects successfully when assigned). I feel like I’m clinging to my boss when I’m proactive and ask for work to do, but I feel like avoiding her and just not working is much worse. Any advice?
Instead of asking her for one additional assignment at a time, name the pattern for her and ask if there’s a way to address it more broadly. For example: “I’m finding that I end up with free time most days and then need to come back to you for more to do. Would it be possible to give me a whole group of projects at once so I’m not having to seek out work from you so often, and/or longer-term projects that aren’t urgent but I can return to whenever I have downtime?”
It’s possible that this will resolve on its own once you’ve been there longer; your manager might be doling things out more slowly than she normally would because it takes her time to train you on each new thing, and she might not have enough time to train you on everything immediately. But it’s a reasonable question to raise and see what she says.
4. Suggesting I return to my old job … with a big raise
Before the pandemic, I was at a company I really liked. It included a big pay boost from my previous role, a really fun and dynamic culture, plenty of perks, and a team and work I enjoyed. Before Covid hit, they transitioned my department to new leadership, and my heart sank. The person who moved into a major role was someone I knew that long term, I had no desire to work under. I didn’t agree with their management style, and we’d butt heads severely.
I looked for a new role, got hired at with a HUGE pay jump, and made a swift exit. I tried my best to leave on good terms. There was a bit of a hiccup — a team member reached out not too long ago asking if I could help out/freelance, which I was very open to, but it became clear that leadership didn’t approve it — and I never heard back after I basically agreed to do it.
Fast forward to now. I just saw that the manager moved on to another company, and my old role is still open. Part of me is thinking I’d be interested in going back, but not at my old salary. I’m not really looking to twist their arm, but I would be open to boomeranging, if they could get close. Then again, they might not be interested at all. Is it worth it to reach out? Of course, the worst they could say is no, which, not the end of the world. Just wondering if there is a respectful way to go about it, which wouldn’t seem opportunistic.
Does the pay leap they’d have to offer put you way outside what you know to be their range for your old role? If they pay people in that role, say, $60-70K and you’d need $110K to go back, that’s probably not going to happen. However, if they’ve been paying way under-market and they’ve seen they’re not able to replace you at the old salary level, there’s more of a chance.
Assuming what you’d need to return isn’t wildly over the market for the work itself, it should be perfectly fine to contact them and see if they’re interested. You could frame it as, “I’d love to come back. I want to be up-front that I’ve found similar roles are paying around $X and I’d be looking for a salary in that range. Is that something that could work on your end?”
5. With remote work, which state laws apply?
I think this question also applies to folks who live in one state but work in another, but I’m mostly thinking about situations where remote employees live in a different state then the one their employer is based in. If there are different laws about pay, benefits, etc., which law applies? For example, if an employee resides in a state that requires X be covered by health insurance, but their employer is based in a state that doesn’t, is that coverage required? Does it matter if the employee is full-time remote or commutes across state lines to work?
The laws of the state where the work is taking place are what govern. So if your company is based in Florida but you work remotely in Massachusetts, your employer has to follow Massachusetts laws when it comes to you. Sometimes the laws in play are more or less the same, but sometimes they can be quite different. For example, if you’re in California and your employer is in Virginia, they’re going to have handle your overtime pay differently from everyone else’s (since federally overpay pay kicks in when you work more than 40 hours in a week but in California it kicks in after eight hours in a day) and maybe your vacation time too (California bans use-it-or-lose-it laws; any unused vacation time has to roll over to the next year), among other things. That’s one reason why some employers are reluctant to let people work out-of-state (plus the fact that doing so establishes business nexus, which can have big tax implications for them).
But again, it’s the state where the work is taking place. So if you live in, say, Virginia but commute to an office in Maryland for work every day, Maryland’s laws are what would apply.
