update: my boss says my salary research is wrong, coworkers won’t answer their phones, and more

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 four updates from past letter-writers.

1. My job wants me to hit up everyone I know for money and other help

So it’s been a bit of a twisty path since I wrote in. I’ll start by thanking Alison and the commentariat for really helpful advice.

The small group meetings with the explicit purpose of sharing our personal contacts and their locations kept being postponed. Casual discussions about the principles of the project continued during other meetings, and I began to lay the groundwork suggested in the advice and discussions along the lines of “of course” I’ll have a think about it, but it may not be appropriate.

At one of these meetings when our CEO was speaking, I caught some side-eye from a few coworkers and spoke to them separately afterwards. It turns out they were especially opposed to the idea of going in pairs to social groups to proselytize, and the idea of mixing work/personal boundaries.

Then it all got a bit mysterious because the consultant, who I never did manage to find anything shady about, vanished from the project and was never spoken of again by the CEO. There was quite a lot of speculation among our little band of rebels.

So then the individual meetings got put back on the table but in a different way. Basically we all got together one day in small teams and mapped out local groups — crucially not our personal contacts but publicly available information around groups like community centers, faith groups, seniors’ meetups and so on. Stuff that’s easily findable on Facebook and so on.

But then it all kind of fizzled out. I believe our management team reached out to some targeted groups and made a few useful connections, but we were never again asked to hit up our personal contacts, for which I was profoundly grateful! But a nice side note is that I now count two of those rebellious coworkers as personal friends — and in a note of irony, one of them comes along to my book club. (But we don’t talk about work there!)

Thanks again, really appreciated Alison and everyone taking the time.

2. My boss says my salary research is wrong because our benefits are so great

Thank you so much for publishing my question about my salary negotiation gone wrong! I love reading updates on your site, so here’s mine: about two months after the promotion, my manager called me into her office out of the blue and gave me a 5% raise! She also gave me a copy of my supposed “total compensation” in writing. It consisted of my new annual salary, plus the bonus I got last year, plus the total reimbursements I’ve received so far this year (which was wrong, by the way), plus the total employer match on my retirement contributions (which is not vested yet and I’ll forfeit when I leave). Ha! As one commenter mentioned, I think the company is trying to identify “total cash compensation,” but this doesn’t seem like an accurate way to achieve that.

The reason for the delayed response? The position I was promoted into didn’t exist at this company before, and from what I can gather (the office is an open floor plan and we hear things), executive management has had some difficulty determining an appropriate salary band for me, because there was no one else in the company in a comparable role. Instead of telling me that they needed time to consider, though, I got an immediate “no,” followed up months later by “here’s part of what you asked for,” with no explanation of why.

Unfortunately, I’ve found this to be a frustrating pattern of communication with my manager. Any time I try to voice concerns or dissenting opinions, she shuts me down in the moment, then comes back a day or two later and suddenly agrees with me. It’s also been really challenging trying to succeed in a job that’s new to the company (I know this work was being done by someone before me, but no one here seems to know anything about it, so I’m just making it up as I go). Like most of your letter writers, the issue I wrote in about is really just the tip of the iceberg. I took on the promotion because I saw an opportunity to step up and take on an important responsibility that had been dropped, and I wanted to take a more active role in addressing our team’s stressful workload. Instead I’m frustrated and demoralized trying to adapt to the new senior-level position without any guidance or support.

I appreciate the small salary bump I got, but I’m planning to start job searching in a few months (when I can say that I have six months of experience in the new role). Fortunately this role is highly desired in my industry and I think I have a good chance of finding somewhere with better management and an established team where I won’t be trying to invent my own job description, which has been an exercise in futility since the day I started working here.

3. My coworkers won’t answer their phones, ever

Thank you for your advice back in March on my colleagues not answering their phones, and thank you also to the commenters who provided additional ideas. I appreciated the reality check. Unfortunately I was unable to take a lot of the advice because it centered around asking my supervisor to intervene, and he is one of the main culprits. At the time I wrote, when things were quite bad, he was asking me to return most of his voicemails not obviously from the bank or a very high-ranked VIP. This led to things like me calling someone back to ask what they wanted, them explaining a problem I couldn’t possibly help with, and me explaining they would have to speak with my supervisor — which is obviously what they had tried to do. Very awkward.

Things are a little better now, mainly because a new person was hired — who also doesn’t really use the phone, but who is taking over a lot of work that was overwhelming everyone else, so in turn, people are more on top of their email inboxes. A lot of the phone calls were really people frustrated by lack of email response, so we get less of that now.

Another thing that happened is we simply alienated the customers who wanted constant contact by phone, which rightly or wrongly, was simply unrealistic for the team that we have. So we don’t work with those customers anymore, thus fewer calls. And finally, most staff got a tiny bit better about agreeing to set up phone meetings or otherwise speak on the phone — maybe 20% better? In total, I get far fewer calls that aren’t for me, without the problem having ever been fully solved.

Like a few of the letter writers I have seen on your site, I tried to solve one small thing I thought I could solve but really, it’s a larger set of issues.

Thanks again for your help, and for the site as a whole. I have learned a lot over the years, and appreciate the humor too.

4. I heard a rumor that an exec is harassing multiple women, but no one wants to make an official complaint (#3 at the link)

I did pass along the report of harassment to both our HR and Legal departments, and they seemed to take it seriously from what I could tell.

HR leadership let me know that they were going to conduct an investigation. I was later informed that it was complete. I was not told (nor should I have been) the findings, or whether there were consequences for anyone.

All I know is that everyone has remained employed. I have not heard any further complaints, and so I hope nothing further has occurred.

Thanks for your advice and for that of your readers.

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