I work with my spouse, losing sick days I was given when hired, and more

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

1. I work with my spouse, and it’s affecting me at work

My spouse (“Sam”) and I work in an agency that is a smaller arm of a large national corporation. Sam began working here five years ago, made close friendships with others in the program, and has an extremely good professional reputation.

Three years ago, I was hired out of graduate school for the agency site associated with Sam’s program. It is likely I was interviewed because of their success in the field. At the time I was hired, I discussed with my manager that I would not work directly with my spouse for many reasons, including ethics and work-life balance. This wasn’t a concern at the time since Sam was working in a special program and with clients in a different state. That, however, changed last year.

I’ve learned a lot from this job. My performance reviews are good, and I get positive feedback. I’ve also learned that this subset of our industry is not healthy for me to remain in. As a result, I’m building a small business of my own on the side with hopes of eventually leaving this company, and have I transitioned to half-time. Additionally, with a lot of therapy and introspection, I know that I’m deeply unhappy in my marriage. I see parts of Sam that our colleagues never see. It’s very difficult to be working from home, living with them, and sharing coworking space. At a minimum, I would like for us to live separately and am working on how to do that financially.

Last year, a sociopolitical situation resulted in Sam needing to quickly move from their work in the other state. Big Boss brought Sam on to our site, working on a team adjacent to mine. Then, when my manager took a different position at the end of last year, Sam applied for their role. Big Boss split the management role into two positions to promote Sam and one of Sam’s coworkers from the special project (“Clarissa”) into the position.

Initially, I reported to Clarissa while still working in my old team with someone managed by Sam. This quickly leaked into our private lives, and I was put in the uncomfortable position of trying to navigate supporting Sam and supporting coworkers when conflict arose. When this happened, I spoke with managerial parties involved about how this structure was not working and asked to transition directly to an open position on Clarissa’s team. This was facilitated, enthusiastically by Clarissa and oddly reluctantly by Big Boss.

The work on this team is more challenging and is impacting my mental health. However, I enjoy working with Clarissa as a manager and a human. I would like to open up to her about some of the ways my relationship, finances, and current living situation are impacting my overall health and ability to show up for clients. However, given her friendship with Sam and the already porous boundaries within our field, I have concerns about how to navigate this conversation. I don’t want it to feel like I am badmouthing her friend and colleague. At the same time, my relationship struggles are relevant to my work performance. Do you have any advice on how to navigate talking to coworkers about struggling in your marriage when your spouse is your coworker?

In this situation, you can’t really talk to your coworkers about what’s going on in your marriage, when your spouse is also a coworker. You just … can’t. (It would be different if Sam were being abusive; then you’d have to talk with your employer about safety measures.)

I think the question is: if you could talk to Clarissa about this, what would you want her to do with that information? If there’s something specific she could do, like taking over a particular meeting with Sam so you don’t have to do it or some other concrete thing that would help, just ask her for that specifically. If you need some grace because it’s a challenging time in your personal life, you can ask for that (while being vague about what the challenges are). But it should be something specific and actionable, not just background info. Plus, as your boss, she doesn’t really need info about what’s going on with your relationship, finances, and living situation (and may feel uncomfortable having it); she needs info about what you need from her, and that’s what you should focus on, without getting into the personal details.

There are situations where you could share more with a boss, but (a) that’s more of a bonus in a boss/employee relationship, not a default, and (b) when you take a job working with a partner, you necessarily give some of that up. I’m sorry because this sounds hard!

2. Losing sick days I was given when hired

When I was first hired to my job, I was given vacation and 10 sick days. My hiring letter said 10 sick days, as did all subsequent letters (we get new hiring letters when we get raises). The employee handbook, although not revised in many years, also said 10 sick days.

I’ve asked for more vacation in my annual reviews and been told no because everyone has to have the same vacation days or it’s not fair.

It has come to light that recently hired employees are only getting five sick days. I asked my supervisor to confirm the days my supervisee gets, and he said she should only have five. I told him full-time employees get 10 days, and I was hired at 10 days and it’s in the employee handbook. He said the handbook is old and now everyone should only get five. And that at the end of this calendar year he’s going to redo everyone’s vacation and sick days to make sure everyone has the same thing.

It seems like I’m about to be docked five sick days! My last letter reaffirming my 10 sick days was only last year! (And I’m pretty sure he’s taking more than five sick days himself, although I guess that’s not really relevant.)

It’s a small nonprofit and I’m pretty senior. I believe that shorting people on sick days is very short-sighted because it costs the organization nothing, it doesn’t carry over, and not everyone uses them, but when you really need them, you really need them! Lots of staff have kids and elderly parents; five days is not enough. It’s a way to be kind and supportive, and cutting some people’s days will really tank morale. How would you suggest I approach this?

Make the case for keeping the 10 sick days and raising the recently hired employees’ allotment to match. You said you’re pretty senior, so you have standing to advocate for this. Point out that it would be a significant cut in benefits to yourself and other employees and is likely to harm morale, and that people will end up coming into work sick and getting others sick, thereby harming everyone’s productivity. You might also point out that five sick days is well below the national average, and that nonprofits typically try to make up for lower-than-average salaries by keeping benefits good, or least competitive.

And I don’t know what your manager’s role is, but if he’s not the decision-maker on this, talk to the person who is — and consider getting other senior-level employees to push back with that person too.

3. What can HR offer employees when a manager just isn’t good?

How do you navigate situations in HR where an employee’s concerns about their manager are valid from a relational standpoint, but not actionable from a policy perspective?

Sometimes the honest reality is … their manager just isn’t great.

We currently share resources such as mediation, ways to respond to disciplinary actions, and recommend escalating through their management chain, but employees still feel stuck. What else can HR realistically offer?

If your company is set up to support it, you can offer coaching and training for the manager, pinpointing the issues that you see come up as patterns on their team. If your company isn’t set up to support that, you can advocate for it, or at least try to do some less formal coaching of managers. You should also be flagging any pattern of problems with a manager to the person who manages them.

Sometimes, too, HR can be well positioned to act as a sort of interpreter — “it sounds like when your manager said X, what she was getting at was Y” and “What if you approached it like X?” and so forth. But ultimately, when managers aren’t good at managing, it’s in the company’s best interests to get them better at it, which means they need coaching and training and sometimes intervention from above.

4. Should I tell my boss about an employee who’s claiming overtime when she’s not working?

I usually err on not reporting on coworkers unless it impacts me or is potentially hurting others. However, I am in a weird place. I report to the director, but previously reported to the manager. While I do not manage anyone now, I am considered part of the leadership team, and the manager and I have a good relationship. She reports to the director as well.

We have one non-exempt employee who routinely comes in at least an hour early and clocks in for it even though there really isn’t any work for that role to be done at that time. She reports to the manager, who says nobody has challenged the overtime so she isn’t interfering. We have four people in the same position who do not get this overtime and come in at the appropriate time to serve clients.

This is awkward because I do metrics, audits, SOPs, training, etc. — nothing client-facing. And I report to the manager’s boss, who I feel would not be happy with this situation. On the other hand, I’ve noted it to the manager and they’ve chosen to do nothing. I am hesitant to bring this to my director, but I am also aware she will know that I knew about this if it comes out later and is a problem. If I talk to the director, she will talk to the manager, who will almost certainly know I was the person. So — stay quiet (eyes on my own paper) or talk to my boss, who is also the manager’s boss, so she can work with the manager on the correct solution?

Discreetly share it with your boss. This is actually pretty clear-cut because it does affect you: you said your director will know that you knew about it if it comes out later. That would be my advice to anyone in your shoes, but particularly as someone involved in auditing, there are additional expectations on you not to look away when someone is, pretty literally, stealing from the company and their manager has decided not to intervene.

When you talk to your boss, say you’d like to avoid causing tension in your relationship with the manager, if there’s a way for her to “discover” what’s happening on her own.

5. Listing an acquisition on my resume

I just got my first job after graduating (thanks for the resume and interview tips on your site!) and three months after I started, my company got acquired by a larger firm.

I’m not planning to leave soon and I doubt they’d let me go with our spring and summer busy season coming up, but when I do decided to head out, how I put this on my resume without looking like I skipped out on a job after less than a quarter of a year?

It’s going to stay all one job on your resume, not be separated into two different listings. Do it like this:

Taco Quality Tester
Tacos Inc. (formerly Taco Utopia), October 2025 – November 2027

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