coworker was upset that she wasn’t told to go home early, colleague asked if I have a “side piece,” and more

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

1. My coworker was upset that she wasn’t told to go home early after getting bad news

I have a coworker who recently found out she’d likely have to put her dog to sleep. She was crying at work, understandably so, and it was quite upsetting to see. I went through something similar about three years ago and losing a pet is devastating.

For the rest of the day after finding out, she was berating management for not offering her the opportunity to go home early. The thing is, it’s common knowledge at my job that if you need, or even just want, to go home early, management always says yes. All she had to do was ask but, but she thought they should have offered without her asking. She’s an adult (34 years old) and I think she should just ask for what she needs. She’s not a new employee, has asked to leave early several times before, and she has never been told no. That leads me to believe it was not a case of her thinking she’d be denied leaving early if she asked. Do you think management was wrong for not offering to send her home early?

Not particularly. I mean, yes, if her manager knew what was going on or how upset she was, it would have been kind to say, “Would you rather go home early for the day?” But it’s not a huge deal that they didn’t offer it proactively. If she wanted to leave, she needed to say that herself.

Is she often irrational? If not, I’d write this off to her just being in an upsetting moment; grief sometimes grabs on to unrelated things.

2. My coworker asked if I have a “side piece”

Is it okay to ask a coworker if they have a “side piece”?

Background: I’ve only been working at this company for a short time. I keep my personal life almost totally separate from work. The coworker who asked me this, Lesley, doesn’t know me well at all. We’ve worked together a few days total. I was told secondhand that Lesley has a romantic interest in me, and I let the wingman know the feelings weren’t mutual.

We were working together one day when Lesley asked if I had a side piece. I was already annoyed and walked away without replying. Should I have said something?

I’m just curious if this is okay, but I don’t want to ask HR and make it a big deal. On one hand, it seems too personal of a question for work, and a quick google makes it seem like “side piece” is kind of offensive and refers to cheating. On the other hand, maybe it’s not really more offensive than asking about a boyfriend or girlfriend (I’m not trying to be judgmental).

No, that’s a rude and inappropriate question to ask someone in most circumstances — and particularly at work and particularly someone who you barely know. What the hell, Lesley?!

3. Should I let my boss know this mistake was my coworker’s, not mine?

I work on a team of two. Technically three, but our manager leads another team as well and leaves most of the day-to-day work to me and my colleague. I am the newest member of the team and joined less than a year ago. My colleague has been on the team for close to five years and has a more established relationship with our manager.

We are responsible for launching compliance courses to the company and we take turns creating and assigning the courses. The last course launched by my colleague was missing some of the people who should have been assigned to it. The stakeholder reached out to us when she noticed people missing on the course completion report. I happened to be the one to see the email first and did the research to find out what happened. After identifying and fixing the error, I replied-all to the email, which included my manager.

My manager then responded directly to me asking what happened. I confirmed it was a mistake on our end, as opposed to a system glitch. I included a screenshot to show the error, but it also displayed the name of the person who created the course (not me). My manager thanked me for doing the research but also mentioned, very seriously, that we can’t allow these mistakes to happen in the future. I agreed.

My colleague was not given the same reminder, as far as I’m aware. Coincidentally, she left the office later that same day to go on a week-long vacation. She did not see the email about the error before she left, so I can’t just wait for her to take ownership of the mistake.

My manager does not seem to be aware that the error did not originate with me, although it should have been clear from the screenshot. I am a firm believer in letting my work speak for itself and not bringing anyone else down to elevate my own reputation. However, I’m afraid this could affect my performance review if I don’t set the record straight. Should I speak up or will doing so make me look like a tattletale?

How big of a deal is the mistake? If it’s a big deal, then you can say something like, “I’m taking seriously what you said about what happened with the course assignment, and I’ll make sure Jane knows this happened when she’s back.” Otherwise, though, if it’s not a huge issue and is more the kind of thing that your boss is unlikely to be thinking about a week from now, just let it go (although you also could have said, “I’ll make sure Jane knows this happened when she’s back” in the moment; there’s just less need to go back and say it now).

4. Pregnancy when you’re remote and no one sees you

I work for a matrixed multinational company that has a strong WFH culture and very limited travel budgets. In my core role, I manage a global team and work with other global teams who I almost never meet in person. I am also affiliated with a local office where I am active in a secondary role and see colleagues in person whenever I choose to go into the office. I work much more closely with the colleagues in my primary role than with the colleagues in my secondary role.

I give birth in a couple months. I shared the news with my manager and direct reports at the three-month mark, but did not bring it up in most other work meetings unless someone directly asked me, “What’s new with you?” At this point, colleagues at the local office have put two plus two together because I have morphed into an anthropomorphic beachball, but virtual colleagues often remain unaware.

How you would approach pregnancy awareness in offices when so many people work from home and have cross-functional projects that are intense but kept on relatively short timelines, with limited-to-no interaction on a personal level? My primary motivation in having others know is to check/set their expectations on my current and future project capacity and energy levels. I have now added an email signature that shares my parental leave dates (waited until one month out from the start date) but I am curious if there are any other suggestions.

Just with a matter-of-fact email about your leave, sent to anyone who might be impacted from it. For example: “I want to let you know that I expect to be out from X to X on maternity leave. You can contact ___ in my absence.” That’s it!

5. How should my resume handle a year where I had nothing to do at work?

For about a year, I was on an “experimental” team that sounded right up my alley when I transferred into it … but then we had no direction and almost no work to do, and spent most of the time “training” on skills that we never used (which have been useless to me in my current role). In the whole time I was on that team, we had, generously, maybe 2-4 weeks’ worth of work.

And now I’m updating my resume for the first time in years, and I’m unsure what to do. Part of me wants to pretend I was still in my previous role that year, or in my current one, but I worry that adding in that extra year to either without anything to show for it would look bad, too. (I’m not worried about titles; mine was never changed from one role to the other.) So is that what I should do? Or should I leave it in my resume and just address it as it comes up in interviews?

If your title didn’t change, that is a complete non-issue! You don’t need to specify that you were on a different team for that year; since your title remained the same, you can just not mention it. It’s just your title and the dates you held that title, followed by bulleted accomplishments from your time with that title. They don’t need to know that none of those accomplishments happened during a particular 12 months in that overall period.

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