coworker follows up way before deadlines, do I really have to mention my divorce at work, and more

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

1. Coworker sends emails with deadlines, then asks everyone to answer immediately

I work in an office and I have a coworker who is one of the few on the admin team with me. We’re peers; neither of us manages the other. She has a habit that I find frustrating: she will send out an email giving instructions and a deadline, then start following up immediately.

As just the latest example, today, it was wanting to know shirt sizes so she can buy company merch for employees and attendees of an event we’re having if they’re bringing family members or significant others. She put in the email that that we should send an answer by a deadline 12 days from now.

She sent this email at 8:03 this morning and at 8:11 one of the other admin employees walked near her desk on his way to somewhere else and she said, “Hey, did you get my email? Do you know when you can let me know your shirt sizes?” She then asked me and another admin the same question around 10:00. (I understand it’s just shirt sizes here and it should be reflexive for most people to answer, but some people don’t want to answer right away for various reasons. For instance, I’m losing weight and want to try on the shirt at home I had from last year’s event to see how big/small it is on me.)

This is today’s example, but this issue has surfaced many times. If she needs to know immediately, that’s fine. If there’s a deadline, that’s fine. And I could understand if it were, say, two days before the deadline and she reminded people. But this is a lot more frustrating.

How do I respond? I don’t think it’s any of her business why I don’t want to say right away, but I also don’t want to be rude and I’d like to point out her own deadline.

“Oh, do you need to know now? I thought the email said March 20.”

Or: “I’m not sure yet, but I’ll get back to you before the deadline.”

Or: “Haven’t had a chance to think about it yet, but I’ll let you know before the deadline.”

Related:
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2. Do I really have to mention my divorce at work?

I work in a profession where having a polished, professional appearance is crucial to maintaining your upward career trajectory. The basic ethos is that if you can’t keep your home life in order, you can’t be expected to manage high-profile “cases” (while I’m not a lawyer, I am in a legal-adjacent field). Getting divorced brings up questions about distractibility and bandwidth to handle a moderately heavy workload (ie 50-60 hours a week in a typical week, 70+ in the quarter leading up to a big case) where there are often last-minute changes in schedule (i.e., a request comes in at 3 pm with a legally mandated response time of 24 hours later). I’ve seen this come up before in the field with friends who have gotten divorced, so this isn’t me overthinking.

None of this was an issue for me until I recently realized that I’m likely to be getting a divorce and will end up a single mother. I have a lot of support in place, but will be paying significant alimony and child support to my ex-husband so I couldn’t leave the career that I love and have a graduate degree in, even if I wanted to.

My plan has been to simply not mention the divorce at work; I’m senior enough that I can take time out during the day for attorney calls and to handle any issues. At work, I think I can get away with just calling my ex-husband by his name and/or saying “the kids father.”

My issue is that I’ve mentioned this to several friends who aren’t in my field and each of them thinks that this is a terrible lie by omission. One in particular is beside herself; she was also the one who was very upset when I didn’t tell my office that I was engaged because she thought it was essential information for them. I hadn’t told the office because I didn’t have a traditional proposal or engagement ring; we simply decided over a series of discussions to get legally wed after moving in together and set a date. People expressed mild surprise when I told them about the marriage and started wearing a wedding ring set, but it did not seem to be a scandal.

Since I’m not some sort of monarch or public figure, disclosing this information does not seem to be material to the company or have any financial effects to it, so why would they care? But am I off-base with this?

You are not off-base. Your friends are being really weird, especially the friend who thought it was a terrible crime not to share your engagement at work! Your coworkers are not entitled to the details of your personal life; yes, most people share at least the basics like marital status because it comes up during normal chit chat and getting to know people, but when you have a specific reason not to want to share a change, you’re not morally obligated to!

It might come up if you have to take your ex’s name off specific benefits like health insurance, but otherwise you’re allowed to keep this private if you prefer to. And it sounds like you have more reason than most to prefer it; it’s bizarre that your field passes professional judgment on people who get divorced! (What about people who started out and stayed single? What if you were widowed? It’s pretty absurd.)

3. When should you escalate issues to HR?

I work at a company with a fully staffed employee relations/EEO (Equal Employment Opportunity) team. The team I work on is a dysfunctional nightmare and I’m actively interviewing to get out.

Over the past year, complaints to the EEO team have exploded. Our organization now seems to use the EEO team either as a mediator for every little problem or as a tool for revenge over perceived slights.

Of course, employees should have a mechanism to address harassment and misconduct. But I’ve been a witness in over 10 investigations and have been the target of one myself. The one against me was a false accusation, and I was cleared of any wrongdoing.

Obviously I’m angry that someone lied and tried to damage my reputation and career. But I’m also tired of being roped into investigations that seem petty and minor. (Think: differences of opinion about work processes.) These issues could be resolved in one conversation by people communicating like adults. I can’t trust a good portion of my coworkers or my own supervisor because any little upset seems to trigger another investigation.

I am way too in the mud here so I need an outside perspective. When is it actually appropriate to escalate issues to EEO?

When there are good-faith concerns about harassment or discrimination or managerial misconduct. Differences of opinion about work processes and things of that nature should be discussed directly with the other person and then, if they can’t be resolved that way and are important enough not to drop, they should be escalated to the relevant managers.

Employee relations/EEO staff aren’t there to referee minor disputes. They’re there for potential legal issues or other significant inequities.

Related:
when should you go to HR?

4. Do my multiple layoffs make me look like a job hopper?

Like lots of other professionals the past few years, I’ve experienced layoffs — three times in the past three years. I was at these jobs for anywhere from five months to almost three years, and my gaps between employment range from one to nine months. I’ve seen a lot of posts on your site about perceived job hopping on resumes, and how you should stay on a role for a few years to prove you won’t just up and leave … but how do you do this if the leaving was out of your control?

For the past six months, I’ve taken on a role that is giving me great experience but is not ideal in a lot of other respects (commute, pay, the chance of moving up in the company) and I’m starting to look for other roles again, and I would really like to clean up my disaster of a resume before I do.

Employers understand that layoffs are different than you deciding to leave all your jobs after very short stays (or being fired for performance from a bunch of them).

It’s also true that if all your jobs are one to nine months (when not intended from the start to be short-term), it can be hard to have the kind of impressive accomplishments that will help you get hired for a job you really want.

The only real way to clean it up is to stay at jobs longer when given the chance to. So, ideally, you’d stay at your current one for at least a few years before you start looking again. But whether that actually makes sense to do has to be balanced against other factors, like how significant the gap is between what it pays versus what you could earn somewhere else (if it’s a small gap, it might make sense to stay for a while so your resume is more appealing the next time you’re looking), how awful the commute is, etc. You could also just start looking now but only accept a job that you’re very confident you’ll be able to stay at for at least a few years — but you also need to factor in that that’s not always in your control, and if you get laid off from the next one, you’ll have added two more short stays to a resume that’s already very choppy, and at some point it’s going to get harder to be hired by the sort of good job that you’d want to stay at longer-term and so it can become a self-perpetuating problem.

Caveat: there are some fields where this kind of resume is no big deal! You probably know if you’re in one of them, though.

Related:
is job-hopping still a bad thing?

5. Declining a job because of the health insurance provider

I’ve been working with a recruiter who I really like in my job search. Recently he sent me a role that at first I was excited about. He also sent me a link to their benefits package, and I saw that the healthcare provider was UnitedHealthcare.

They are notoriously difficult to work with, and I know with my health situation, it would be a nightmare. I did not approve of their business practices before their CEO was killed, but my reasons for not wanting to deal with them are because of my own health, not primarily because of moral reasons (although that plays in as well).

I sent a response to the recruiter saying that although the role sounded otherwise great, I could not take a role where UnitedHealthcare was the provider. My goal was to be purposely vague to not disclose private health information, but also so they can provide feedback to their client if needed, and so he knows that this is a requirement for me.

My question is how best to handle this if it comes up in the future. I want to stay vague as to my own health status, but also want to make it clear that is a deal-breaker on a job.

In the future, I would add slightly more to the statement you sent so it’s clear where you’re coming from — something like, “Unfortunately in the past I’ve found UnitedHealthcare to be difficult to work with to the point that having insurance with them again would be prohibitive for me. I understand there’s always a risk a company I’m working for might switch to them, but I can’t knowingly come on board with them as the insurance provider.”

That last part feels important to say because the reality is that you could take a job somewhere that then decides to switch to them — but that’s different than deliberately signing on for them when you can preemptively opt out.

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