bringing alcohol to the home of a recovering alcoholic, a candidate’s obnoxious Facebook comments, and more

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. Bringing alcohol to the home of a recovering alcoholic

My coworker is a recovering alcoholic; he doesn’t discuss it but never drinks, occasionally refers to “when I was drinking,” and once was frightened when he learned there may have been alcohol in a dessert he’d eaten (there wasn’t). His wife has generously invited to office over for dinner. She told us that “we keep a dry house” but we’re welcome to bring alcohol if we want it with our meal.

This has created a debate within the office. Two want to bring alcohol, arguing that she told us (without us asking, I should add) that we could. The rest of us feel it would be rude and we should respect the rules of her house and our coworker’s feelings.

We’ve agreed we won’t bring alcohol. I’m wondering, though, what is your take?

Yeah, don’t bring alcohol. It’s not like bringing along your own allergen-free food to ensure there will be something you can safely eat; you don’t need alcohol with the meal, and it’s more respectful to your coworker not to. And really, if someone feels like it will be an enormous inconvenience not to have alcohol with a single meal, I’d wonder what was up.

It might be different if you were close friends and better positioned to judge how much it would actually bother them … and how much the “you’re welcome to bring your own” comment was sincerely meant versus something they say but still prefer people not do. (And yes, they shouldn’t say it if they don’t mean it, blah blah blah, but people being humans, it happens anyway.) But you’re colleagues and not as well positioned to dig into “how much would this really bother you?” as you’d be with a friend, so it’s better to err on the side of respecting their alcohol-free home.

2. Should I consider a candidate’s obnoxious Facebook commenting when hiring?

I work in nonprofits. For anonymity’s sake, I’ll just broadly say I work in the arts. I am part of several arts-related groups on Facebook, including several specific to my niche and several region-specific groups. I’m not a huge Facebook person, so I mostly just join to keep up with local events and interesting initiatives in the field. But over the past year or so, I’ve noticed one woman, Hannah, who has joined every major arts group as well, plus all of the region-specific groups. She stands out as particularly difficult. She aggressive on almost every single post. She will get into heated arguments, and frequently tells other people that they don’t know what they’re talking about. The real kicker is that she is wrong about quite a bit. She gets extremely defensive when called out, despite admitting that she is relatively new to the field. To be clear, I’ve never actually tried to find her content, and I’ve never even engaged with her — this is just what I see every single time I open the group pages. It definitely sours the overall vibes of the group.

At work, I’m on a hiring panel for a role that does not report directly to me, but works under my guidance on a few projects. The other day, HR mentioned that they’d be sending along a new resume, for a woman named Hannah. I didn’t think anything of it until I hopped on Facebook later in the day and, once again, saw Hannah getting into a heated debate in the comments of an otherwise positive, non-controversial post. Obviously, I have no idea if this is the same Hannah. She has a common first name but a very unique last name, so it will be easy to tell when I see the resume.

I’m very doubtful this will happen, but mostly out of curiosity: what if it’s the same Hannah? Would I need to bring it up to the hiring panel ahead of time? I know people have been fired over social media posts, but from what I’ve seen, that is mostly in egregious cases. As far as I can tell, Hannah’s never said anything really terrible — she is just a constant, argumentative presence in groups, harshly criticizing others and often making statements that are plain wrong. Aside from her being a difficult coworker, my first thought is that a combative (and fairly visible) social media presence would be a liability to our organization. But what would be the ethical and professional guidelines here? Is it reasonable to consider personal social media encounters when making a hiring decision?

It is reasonable to consider your own firsthand experience with a candidate, and it is reasonable to consider how a candidate presents themselves within industry-specific spaces. Both of those are in play here!

In fact, I think it would be negligent not to fill the rest of the hiring team in on how you’ve seen Hannah operate in field-specific places. Not only is it data about what she’s likely to be like to work with, but it’s also relevant to how hiring her might be received by others in your field!

3. My roommate shaved my eyebrow just before a big interview

I know by the time you get this it’s going to be too late but I’m freaking out. I’m probably going to tell them I’m sick because I look ridiculous and there’s no way to explain this to them.

I have an interview for a really cool internship tomorrow. This would be my first time working in my field and I’ve low-key been panicking about it before this whole trainwreck.

My roommate had some of our friends over, so I was hanging out with them tonight. I’m currently trying some medication that makes me sleepy, so I fell asleep on the couch.

I woke up to my roommate shaving my eyebrows! She and everyone were super giggly and drunk. They kept trying to say it was fine but I ran to the bathroom and … my stomach is still dropping every time I see my face. She basically shaved off my entire left eyebrow. There’s some hair left, but it’s super obviously shaved and the razor cut me a little so I had to put on a bandaid. I look crazy.

I don’t even know what to do. The firm I’m interviewing at is pretty formal and I’d be seeing clients, so this look is a total no-go. I feel like I can’t even explain what happened because their first impression would be I’m some high-drama party girl. And I can say I’m sick, but I can’t reschedule it anywhere near enough time for my eyebrow to grow back! This has ruined my chance at a job I was so excited for and I feel so stupid.

Eyebrow pencil! You can draw it back on well enough to pass for having an eyebrow at an interview!

4. How early is too early for meetings with an international team?

I’m young and in my first corporate job on an international team (U.S., UK, India) and we have a weekly stand-up at 7 am. As it’s only once a week, I’m alright starting my day earlier to keep my Indian colleagues from staying late but that made me wonder how far outside of work hours is too far for work meetings? 7 am seems unreasonable to me if it were a daily meeting but so does 7 pm for my colleagues in India (given we do 9-5).

Yeah, this is pretty par for the course when you work on an international team. If you need a slot when people in time zones that far apart can all be available, it’s going to be an inconvenient time for someone. But ideally the inconvenience would be rotated so it’s not always the same team getting scheduled outside of normal hours every time.

5. How long should I wait after getting a promotion before job-searching?

I work within a very small (and shrinking) but necessary team in my company. Recently our team’s core personnel was reduced to just me and the team lead, leaving a vacant position, and just today they significantly cut the team lead’s pay, leading him to walk. This leaves me as the only person with significant day-to-day operational knowledge in a technical position, as everyone else are mid- and high-level management who work with several teams and oversee much larger programs.

I’m the senior most member of the team besides the lead and am very likely to get the vacant position. Given the recent state of the company, however, it’s clear that I should not count on any long-term plans with them.

The raise is likely to be significant and the position would look good on a resume, but I’m certain they will overwork and underpay me. But I’m afraid, and with some precedent, that if I refuse, they will lump whatever of his work they can on me and divvy the remaining responsibilities among the upper levels as a “temporary” or “necessary” measure. But I also fear that taking this promotion could shackle me to this position for a while yet.

If I take the promotion, how long should I wait before seeking new employment? I imagine recruiters would look at someone applying soon after a promotion rather negatively, particularly since this would be a jump into a leadership role and could lead to me being seen as either unreliable or unable to handle such a position. Is there any other way I could diplomatically present this within interviews besides “differences of opinion” and “not seeing eye-to-eye with [Employer]”?

You don’t need to hold off on job-searching. Take the promotion and start a job search. It’s not going to look weird.

If a recruiter asks why you’re looking so soon after being promoted, you can say, “I was happy to help out with the role when the company asked me to, but the company has also been making a lot of cuts and I’m looking for something more stable.”

6. Holiday book fair

Just sharing this from a reader:

I think this is coming too late for your holiday posts, but I need to share. I work at a library and every year, we get pretty nice gift bags at the holiday party. But like all gift bags, there are always things that don’t work for some people (particular treats, scented candles, blankets when you have 20-million blankets at home already).

This year, we walked in to discover a BOOK FAIR. The local independent bookstore brought a bunch of hardback books of different genres, puzzles, games, reading lights, etc. Everyone got to pick out something and take it home. I’ve never seen 150 adults so happy about anything. I will be riding that book fair high for months.

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