my boss did a racist impression of a coworker, can I have the schedule flexibility as our CEO, and more

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

1. My boss did a racist impression of a coworker

I’m on a small, mostly autonomous support team in a medium-sized company. We had company-wide training yesterday. My coworker Amy couldn’t attend in person because of a winter storm/flight situation. Amy is black, and the other three of us are white.

My team, and many others, went to a hotel bar after the training. After several beers, my boss Fergus quoted Amy — in poor English, with a thick, fake African (think: Nigerian) accent. Amy has a bit of a (South African) accent and is self conscious about it, which Fergus knows, and has no issues with English. It went over like a lead balloon but he carried on until Beth, who was promoted out of our team before Fergus was hired a year ago, came over and changed the subject. She immediately told Amy about it, and Amy was (obviously!) bothered but isn’t comfortable confronting Fergus.

I’m embarrassed I didn’t say more in the moment and horrified I’ve given Fergus the impression I’m a safe person to behave that way around. I told Amy it bothers me Fergus was comfortable acting that ugly in front of me, and unless she wanted me to leave it alone, I’d like to talk to him about it. She is happy with that, if I don’t mention Beth called her.

But what do I say? I’ve had similar conversations with people I’ve managed elsewhere, but never a boss. He won’t take it well no matter what, but no possible outcome of that is a risk to me. (I have the skill set to move to Beth’s new team.) I know I should be civil but I’ve got half a mind to lead with, “Fergus, what on God’s green earth is wrong with you, and it had better be a brain tumor.” Help?

“I should have spoken up in the moment but I was too taken aback at the time. Mimicking Amy’s accent was really awful.” If he says he was joking around, you can say, “It wasn’t funny.”

But also, would you consider telling someone above Fergus what happened? Someone with some authority over Fergus needs to have a serious conversation with him (as well as, ideally, checking into how he operates beyond this one incident).

2. Can I use the same level of schedule flexibility that our CEO does?

I joined a new company and I’m having trouble deciphering what is the norm in the company culture around time off and flexibility around working with your kids at home.

It’s a relatively small company, and I think around half of the employees have kids. The CEO will regularly mention that his kids are off from school so he won’t be as productive, or he needs to leave early for a school event for the kids.

What I can’t figure out is if he’s being vocal about this because he’s trying to lead by example. “See? I’m practicing what we preach about flexibility and work-life balance so you should feel comfortable doing it too!” Or if he’s the only person who’s actually afforded this kind of flexibility and he gets to do it because he’s the CEO and he hasn’t stopped to consider that it would feel demoralizing for someone else to hear about how he’s basically getting all this extra flex time off that we don’t get. Being a small company, we don’t have HR and the official documentation around time off is pretty slim.

How do you know when to view a leader’s actions as leading by example vs. taking advantage of their special status?

When you see what everyone else does, and how much support there is for them doing what the CEO is doing.

It’s absolutely the case at many companies that C-suite leaders have different rules for flexing their time than everyone else does. Sometimes that makes sense, if a good portion of their off hours are spent dealing with business and networking. Other times it’s just a double standard.

At other companies, the culture supports that level of flexibility for everyone.

You won’t know which category your company is in until you’ve been there longer. Start paying attention to what your direct manager does and what others on your team or at your job level do, and you’ll get a better idea. But if you’re still unsure after a few months, you can also ask colleagues about it directly.

Related:
is it discrimination that all the moms in the company have to have childcare but the one dad doesn’t?

3. I’m asked to justify decisions I disagree with … to the people who made those decisions

I am in a middle management position where sometimes I receive decisions that I strongly disagree with, with little to no explanation, and questions or concerns are shut down. While I don’t love that, I am willing to do my best to make them happen; it’s part of the job. The problem is when they then ask me to justify to them why we should do it.

For example, I’ll present a proposal on, say, doing poodle cuts for our llamas, based on the requirement for doing poodle cuts for the llamas. The proposal contains time frames, budget, milestones, and all the other things a proposal would normally contain, but the section on why we are doing it will be a bit bare, because the only reason I’ve received is because the CEO said it’s essential for any modern llama grooming business, and when I said that doesn’t align with my customer research, they dismiss it. And then I get a ton of criticism on how it’s not really explaining the value or the business reason … but as best I can tell, the value is very limited and it’s not a good business decision.

I’m absolutely willing to believe I’m wrong sometimes, but when my research disagrees and they won’t tell me what their motivation is, how am I supposed to come up with a compelling reason for it?

I understand sometimes you just have to do it because an executive or board member said so, and I have made my peace with that. I’m also able to handle passing that along to team members doing the work when they raise concerns by saying things like “it’s important to the C-suite that we do this,” which is enough to get them on board. What I don’t understand is how I’m supposed to navigate this bind when they demand I justify their own decision back to them and it doesn’t seem like a good decision to me. It frankly seems like an unreasonable ask.

You need to be speaking up earlier in the process and explicitly saying, “Can you tell me your perspective about the business case for this so that I can make sure that’s included in the proposal? It’s not clear to me right now, and I want to make sure I’m able to present a compelling case for it.” If you just hear back “it’s essential for any modern llama grooming business,” try pushing a little — as in, “Assuming I need something more detailed the proposal, can we take a minute to talk through what should be reflected there?”

But if that doesn’t solve it (and it may not, if the person assigning you the work doesn’t have the answers themselves, which I bet is what’s happening), then name the pattern for your boss: “I keep running into a problem where I’m not clear on the business case for projects I need to write up and can’t get that info from anyone, and then my proposals get criticized for not including it. I want to make sure I’m writing proposals that contain all the info people want, so what’s the best way to navigate that?” If that doesn’t help, then I’d flag it for your boss every time before you turn in a proposal that suffers from this — meaning that you should explicitly say something like, “The section on the business case is not well fleshed out because I haven’t been able to figure out what the business case is, only that it’s something Jane asked for. How do you want me to handle that section?”

(However, any chance that in your context it would be appropriate for the section explaining the business value to be more of a clear-eyed look at pros and cons? You might find that easier to put together.)

4. Should we adopt a puppy from my husband’s boss’s boss?

My husband’s boss’s boss breeds dogs and has mentioned that a new litter will be born soon. We have been thinking about getting our first dog recently and I considered this a great opportunity to get a puppy from a trusted source.

He’s concerned that buying a puppy from a higher-up, especially if it’s at a discounted price, could be considered unethical. I argued that buying the puppy wouldn’t be like doing her a favor to receive special treatment at work, thus not unethical. Could you set the record straight for us?

You should defer to your husband (those are weird words to write without the next part of this sentence) because he’s the one who works there and the one who needs to feel comfortable with the relationship dynamics.

That said, the biggest ethical issue would be that buying from breeders incentivizes them to breed more puppies while nearly a million dogs and cats are euthanized in shelters every year because there aren’t enough homes for them all, while millions more sit in cages for months or years while they wait for a family.

So ideally the boss issue would be moot because you’d adopt from a shelter or rescue instead! And if you’re set on a particular breed, you could talk with a breed-specific rescue group. Thank you on behalf of lots of lonely shelter dogs 💙

5. Should I tell my replacement how little work this job has?

For about 10 years, I have been supervising a laboratory for a state government agency. I believe the work we do is very important. My problem is, I have almost nothing to do. In a 40-hour work week, I have about 10 hours of work.

I try to parcel out my work so I have something to do every morning and afternoon. I have taken on jobs that other supervisors didn’t do. I have asked my crew if they need me to do anything. In 10 years, I’ve done about as much research as I can. It is still, on busy weeks, maybe 15 hours worth of work.

About a month into the job, I contacted my predecessor and asked her what she did all day. She said, “I read the news.” As she did, I have been careful not to let anyone know how little there is to do. The problem is, I am retiring this month. One of my crew is taking over. I have mentioned that the job is very boring but, haven’t said why. I’m considering telling him on my last day what the reality is, but I’m not sure that I should. I’d like your take on it.

I don’t see why you shouldn’t; he’s going to figure it out pretty fast, and you can save him from wondering if he’s missing something. You don’t need to go into elaborate detail; it’s enough to just say something like, “The workload of this position is generally very light and I typically had to go out of my way to find things to fill my time.”

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