my boss says 3 of us having dinner would be discrimination, boyfriend got in trouble for picking up medicine, and more

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

1. My boss says three female employees having dinner together would be discrimination

I recently organized a dinner with two of my closest colleagues/friends. It was planned outside of work hours and paid for personally. The dinner grew to include the three other women employees. When my supervisor found out, he said it was gender discrimination because none of the 15 male employees were invited. Without naming names, he made a public announcement about it at our next department meeting.

Is it gender discrimination if women coworkers want to have dinner together in their own social time? Aren’t women a protected legal class?

Men and women are protected legal classes; the class is sex and gender, not just women. (In other words, you can’t discriminate against employees on the basis of sex or gender, no matter what sex or gender they happen to be.)

But a group of coworkers casually socializing outside of work because they happen to be friends is not illegal discrimination — just like if the three of you happened to be white or happened to be Methodist. If you were framing the event as “this is only for women/Methodists to attend and no one else can,” that would be an issue. If you were using the event to plot some harassment of employees of a different protected class, that would be an issue. If you had multiple events with this group and the impact of the events over time led to discrimination against employees of a different protected class (like if only people who attended these dinners were considered for promotion by others in attendance), that would be an issue. If the dinners became a formal company tradition and only people in this one protected class were invited, that would be an issue.

In other words, if all the details were different, that could be an issue depending on what those details were (here’s an example of when that becomes problematic).

Three friends having a casual dinner together is not an issue.

Updated because of math: There are six of you! A single dinner is still fine, although if you started doing it on a regular basis, your manager would have more of a point.

2. How do I lay people off when I disagree with the decision?

I was recently hired into a very senior leadership role at a family-owned company. Since starting, it’s become clear that the company’s finances — and the owners’ personal finances — are in serious trouble, and together they’re pushing us toward a financial cliff. We don’t have outside investors, so when the business needs cash, the owners fund it directly. Based on what I’m seeing, I believe they’ve exhausted both personal resources and business options like credit lines and loans. My predecessor assured me as I raised questions in the transition that ownership always “figures it out,” but I was skeptical even then, and now have mounting evidence to the contrary.

Ownership is advocating for severe staffing cuts in mission-critical areas. The rest of the leadership team and I can’t see how the company will function without certain roles, even with creative workarounds. These cuts won’t come with raises for remaining staff, but will coincide with significant increases to the owners’ salaries and continued spending on vanity projects. We’ve proposed alternative cuts and operational changes that could help, but ownership is resisting or refusing to consider them. Each budget meeting feels collaborative, only to be followed by communications doubling down on and adding even more extreme cuts.

How do I message this to the people I’ll have to lay off and to those left behind? Ownership will likely push these conversations onto me, since they avoid difficult discussions and the affected staff report to me. I don’t feel I can honestly say this was simply a necessary financial decision when I’m actively advocating for viable alternatives, but I also don’t think it’s appropriate to tell my team I was “forced” into it. How do I handle this without destroying trust in me and ownership? (Or even just in me! I’m less concerned about preventing the owners from digging their own graves, but still need to manage my own people effectively with trust and dignity amidst the chaos.)

“I’m very sorry to have to give you this news. Your work has been excellent, and the decision was made above my head. I’m available to give you a glowing reference and for anything else I can do to help.”

You should stay away from openly saying you disagree with the decision; that risks getting repeated back to the owners at some point, which is a problem when you’re acting as a representative of the company, and it has the potential to be raised in legal proceedings in ways you might not intend. But it’s okay to say the decisions were made at a level above you and then focus on what you’re able to do to help them in what comes next.

I’d also think about what you can do to help people on your team see the writing on the wall before the actual layoffs. You need to navigate that carefully so that you’re not disclosing information you’re not permitted to disclose, but there are often ways to hint to people that their jobs aren’t stable.

3. My boyfriend’s boss penalized him for calling off work, then picking up his medications

My boyfriend works at the same big box grocery store where he picks up his medications. He has an ADA accommodation for several chronic conditions, one which can cause his body to go numb and he cannot control his arms or legs very well. These spasms can happen at any time, and when they do he cannot move well or lift anything for 3-5 hours.

There have been several instances where he calls out for having these spasms, but will go to his store after they are over to pick up medications from the pharmacy, and every time the store manager sees him, he is written up for it, and often his manager challenges the validity of his ADA accommodation since he “called out.”

There was another instance where he had to leave work while having a spasm but his manager listed it as unpaid time off instead of sick leave because my boyfriend didn’t specifically cite his accommodation when he notified them he had to leave.

Am I crazy in thinking this is absolutely illegal? He takes a lot of medications and is often picking them up quite regularly. I’ve thought about telling him to find another pharmacy but he doesn’t have a car.

Yes, this is illegal. Not being able to work is different than not being able to pick up medications from a pharmacy. Your boyfriend should talk to his store’s HR about what’s happening and ask that his manager be clearly told to stop harassing him about his health and his medical accommodations, and to have the write-ups in his file removed.

He should also ask that they reclassify the time that his manager listed as unpaid when it should have been sick time (but he also needs to be clear about what’s happening, particularly with this manager, so they know it’s time off that falls under his accommodation).

And yes, if at all possible he should find another pharmacy to use. Is switching to mail order an option?

4. Buying seat upgrades at my own expense for work travel

I’m a part-time administrator at a sports team that’s a member of a national league for an obscure sport. Every year the league books flights for representatives of each group to attend a meeting at their headquarters to discuss business, vote on new rules, etc., but their travel budget is limited and the only flights they’re able to pay for are usually undesirable in some way, like red-eye flights or basic economy with no carry-ons or from a less convenient home airport. I could book my own travel and later get reimbursed up to the limit, but the meetings happen during an off-peak time for that sport and it’s better for our budget to not have to float the entire price of travel.

Are there any issues with accepting the ticket the league arranges for me, then paying the airline the difference for a cabin upgrade or earlier/different origin flight? Does this look overly inflexible or ungracious? When I travel for my day job, they don’t have the same budget restrictions as the league does, so I haven’t faced this question there, and the league colleagues I’ve talked to haven’t thought about it because they’re either OK with the flights they get or just drive there.

Nope, that is fine to do, but you might have an easier time if you let them know you’re doing it — because it could be cheaper for you if the flight is originally booked at the airport you want to use rather than potentially having to pay a change fee. It’s fine to say something like, “I know we’re limited to flights like X and Y because of budget, but Z would be much easier for me so I’m going to cover the difference to make that happen.”

5. Sending my resume to recruiters I’ve worked with on the employer side of hiring

Over the years, I have been on hiring panels where we have worked with external recruiters. As I get ready to start job hunting, is it weird or inappropriate or a bad idea to send an email with my resume to those recruiters we worked with to let them know I’m looking? My current employer isn’t working with the recruiting firms that I have in mind that I’m thinking of.

No, very normal to do! Not weird at all.

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