should I take a job with my politician brother, retreats are full of physical activities I can’t do, and more

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

1. Should I take a job with my politician brother?

My brother is running for local office as a Democrat in our very blue state. I think he has a great shot at winning, and not just saying that because he is my brother. This district has swung very blue since 24. His GOP opponents are definitely beatable.

My state has no rules or guidelines on nepotism in office. So if he wins, and he probably can, I will almost certainly be offered something in his office. I will almost certainly be offered some office in his campaign, as well. Should I take it? On the one hand, it’s working for the family in a huge pressure cooker. On the other hand, it’d be a great experience, and it’s not just a family business. He and I also get along pretty well. Unless it crashes and burns, which could be detrimental. Do you have any advice about what questions to ask myself or him to decide if this would work? Or any guidelines we should set in place if I do decide to do this?

Eh. Do you want to be a nepotism hire, with all that comes with that — like people assuming that you got the job because of your brother and not on merit, colleagues not being candid around you because it might get back to your brother, and — if it’s a job you couldn’t get without the family connection — potentially being responsible for work you don’t have the professional seasoning to do as well as someone experienced could do? And that’s before we even get into the personal complications of working with family, including changing the nature of your relationship with your brother?

Some people clearly calculate that those trade-off’s are worth it to them, but those are the factors I’d try to look at as realistically as possible.

More here:
should I take a job working for my dad?
I am the nepotism hire who no one likes

2. Our retreats are full of physical activities I can’t do

I work at an organization that’s full of outdoorsy people, and most employees work outside at least once a week. I have an admin position and almost always work indoors, at home. This is great for me because I have fibromyalgia and don’t have very much energy for outdoor, physical work. I have trouble standing for long periods of time and have passed out or almost passed out several times in the past while working outside.

However, we have staff retreats several times a year, and they are often set outside and involve a lot of physical activity (hiking, kayaking, etc.). Sometimes I am able to do these activities, and sometimes I’m not. Attendance is required, although it’s not really clear what the consequences would be if we skipped them.

Most of my coworkers relish these retreats and often say how glad they are that we have them outside. The retreats give me a lot of anxiety, because I either won’t be able to do the physical activities, or they will likely cause a flare-up and I’ll have to take time off to recover. I worry that if I ask for some alternatives that are less physical/indoors, my coworkers will resent me. This is especially the case for our team retreats, because our team is small and it wouldn’t make much sense for us to split up to do separate activities, so everyone would end up doing something less physical/indoors. My boss is aware of my fibromyalgia and I have told him that I really struggle with outdoor activities, but since I haven’t needed to formally ask for accommodations (because my core responsibilities don’t require outdoors work) he hasn’t made any changes to our retreats.

How can I ask for what I need without putting a damper on the retreats for the rest of my team?

Bring it up now, before the next one is announced, and say this to your boss: “While I’ve tried to make it work in the past, for health reasons I won’t be able to participate in the physical activities at retreats from now on, like kayaking or hiking. Would it be better for me to not attend, or could we start planning retreats that don’t center around those types of activities?” Alternately, if you prefer to attend and just want different activities, reword that last sentence to, “I get a lot of value out of attending, so could we look at activities that don’t require those physical abilities?” You might also add, “I imagine at some point we may hire others with similar restrictions, and I know we want to be as inclusive as we can.”

If being more inclusive makes your coworkers resentful … well, first, your boss should own this decision herself, not attribute it to you. But also, this is part of working with other people, and they’ll need to get over it! They are free to kayak and hike in their off hours as much as they’d like.

3. Should we stop suspending people without pay before firing them?

My employer’s corrective action plan states that any employee who is issued a final warning (the last step before termination) serves an immediate one-day unpaid suspension. The reasoning is stated to be to emphasize the seriousness of the offense. Recently, I’ve had to enact this policy for someone who has repeatedly violated our attendance policy. I have brought up the fact that it seems pretty silly to suspend someone for not coming to work, and our admin team seems to agree and we may be altering this policy.

In your opinion, are these sort of punitive policies effective or necessary? To me it seems a bit demeaning and assumes our employees aren’t mature enough to understand the consequences of their actions and a bit cruel as we’re weaponizing people’s pay/livelihoods against them. Also, it ends up being a logistical nightmare figuring out how employees are going to serve said suspensions without affecting business operations.

Yeah, you should get rid of the one-day unpaid suspension policy. It’s purely punitive, and the entire concept of “punishment” doesn’t belong at work. There should be natural consequences when people badly mess up, which could be anything from getting less autonomy or less flexibility all the way to losing the job — but those consequences should be the logical result of whatever the problems were, not punishment imposed for punishment’s sake.

If your company’s managers are managing well — setting clear expectations, giving clear feedback, and addressing it forthrightly when someone’s not meeting the bar they need — that should be all they need.

4. I joined the DEI council and they’re asking me for way too much

I work at a large academic medical center and I joined a DEI council at work for staff members across the institution. I was originally told it was a small commitment (on the level of 7-8 hours a month) and it seemed like a good way to connect with people and help out with causes that are important to me.

That does not feel like what I got. I joined a project subcommittee and was handed a project plan to rework that involved organizing equity trainings across the college. The plan was no longer viable as it was several years old. Then it came up a couple of months after we started that the institution would not be able to support creating or facilitating any training sessions, and we would have to shift to something else instead. The way this news was announced by the liaison to the administration made me think it was a known constraint that we weren’t made aware of at the outset.

This something else is likely a resource website, but it appears that my group will have to start from zero and develop all the content ourselves. And I am absolutely not qualified to do that in any way! I am a data analyst for a research lab whose only relevant experience is being part of a marginalized community. And it would be a huge time sink to do it justice.

The other subcommittees seem like less effort, focusing on engaging the full committee and doing some minor event planning (think panel discussions and holiday celebrations).

Is their expectation for the project reasonable under these circumstances? And assuming it is unreasonable, do you have any suggestions on how to get out of it? I technically made a two-year commitment and I’m on month six.

Nope, it’s not reasonable — but even if it were, you’d still be able to explain you didn’t realize that was what you were signing up for and that unfortunately it’s not work you’re able to do.

That’s the framing I’d use here: “I’m sorry, my understanding was that I was signing up for seven or eight hours a month doing things like XYZ. This project is significantly larger and not one I am equipped to take on — and it’s important enough that it should be done by someone qualified to do  it. I’m happy to stay on the larger council if you’d like me to, but I need to step down from this subcommittee.”

5. Resigning when I’m on my honeymoon

I’m interviewing for a job I’m really hopeful for and it’s going well! My third interview (meeting the team) is tomorrow. My concern is about leaving my current job.

Next week I’ll leave for my three-week honeymoon. If I get a job offer while I’m on vacation, what’s the best way to handle this? Do I submit my resignation ASAP? Submit it the second I return and work for two more weeks, assuming my new job would even be okay with that?

For what it’s worth, I am doing my best to leave a list of instructions for “while I’m on vacation” that doubles as instructions for “while I’m gone forever.” My potential new job is already aware of my travel dates and is not concerned about that affecting my start date. And I’m honestly kind of desperate to run out the door from my current job.

One option is to feel out the new job on how comfortable they’d be with you pushing your start date back enough that you could still work one to two weeks at your current job after you return, in order to help transition your work. A lot of employers would be completely fine with that (and would hope their employees would do the same in your situation). If you can do that, that’s the best option.

But if they can’t be flexible on that (and there can be legitimate reasons for that) and you’re not going to be able to give much or any notice, then yes — you’d contact your boss from your vacation, apologize for the timing and say you know it’s not ideal, but you didn’t want to wait until you got back so that they could have the maximum possible notice.

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