boss blames my employee for getting stuck in the Middle East during the war, I’m about to get promoted but I want to quit, and more

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

1. My boss blames my employee for getting stuck in the Middle East during the war

My employee used six weeks of vacation to go back to his home country with his pregnant wife and toddler. It was the first time he’d be with his parents and siblings all together in over a decade. He was due to fly back three days after the war with Iran started, and as his flight went through that region, his flight was cancelled. He was rebooked two weeks later but tried daily to get a different flight and showed up to the airport, he and his family fully packed, because flights going out that day weren’t officially cancelled until around noon each day. After a hellish 55-hour journey, he and his family are safely back and he’s back to work. That period between his normally schedule flight and when he got back exhausted the small remaining amount of vacation hours he had.

But hark! HR told me we have a policy to allow for up to 10 days of admin leave in the event of a disaster, and said this qualifies. Wonderful! I asked if the policy is that the 10 days can be used first or if it can be used only after vacation time has been exhausted, which is a frequent stipulation in some of our other leave policies.

My boss responded that she thinks because “we all knew” war was imminent and he didn’t try to leave earlier, he should get to use only five days and not the full 10. If the employee was in Iran when the war broke out, she’d give him the full 10. But she wants to hear what efforts he made ahead to get out quicker.

She consistently lets her feelings about people’s work cloud her judgment to be a good human when it’s not only the most righteous, but also easiest, choice to make. But hey, at least she put this BS in an email so I can share it back with HR. How should I respond?

“We all knew” war was imminent? Some of Congress didn’t even know war was imminent. Your boss is an ass.

Your employee and his family went through a scary and exhausting ordeal. Your company has a policy set up specifically for disasters. This was a disaster. He should be given the full amount of time HR said was available.

Share your boss’s response with HR and say that you’d like your employee to receive the full 10 days, and that you’re dismayed by the suggestion to penalize him on the grounds that he “should have known.” You might also point out that your boss’s suggestion could be taken as national origin discrimination, which is illegal.

2. I’m about to get promoted but I want to quit

I am mid-20s working at a small office with less than a dozen people while I finish my degree. My boss has told me I will be promoted once funding is approved, and because of that I have been asked to take on more leadership tasks. I have three coworkers who were both hired less than six months ago who both think that, if promotions were to come, they should get them (this is their first job). I have another coworker who is technically an external contractor who works closely with the three new people. Because of her role/contract, she is essentially unfireable for the next two years. She often acts as if she is in charge, something management has told me she has been asked not to do.

A week ago, I had a startling conversation with her and my three other coworkers. She has a habit of staying in conference rooms during meetings she is not a part of, and during this meeting she said that she was the de facto manager of the office, told the other coworkers to disregard what I was asking them to do as it was “not their work” (it is), and asked why I am still working here and said I should have left by now. The other three seemed to feel that the work being discussed was beneath them and heavily implied that they saw me as an obstacle to promotion.

It was clear to me I cannot stay at this job. The power struggle being played into long predates my coworkers, and now that they are friends with this new person and feel half of their workload is irrelevant, I feel strongly that there is no way I can continue my work without being resented or undermined.

My problem is this. I have been working closely with my supervisors to prep me for this promotion. They will feel blindsided if I just quit, and I struggle to imagine how I could pretend everything is fine for the next two months. But if I tell my supervisor what happened, I assume they would try to address things, which I just don’t want. I don’t want to hurt my reputation by covering for them (especially as a recommendation from my supervisor will be important in future career/education steps) but I also don’t want to make the last few weeks of the job miserable. What should I say to my boss and how should I approach the next eight weeks?

Wait, wait! Deciding to leave feels premature — why not first talk to your manager about what got said in that meeting and share your concerns about what this means for your ability to be effective in your work there? If they’ve told this contractor in the past to stay in her lane, it’s very likely that they’ll be upset to hear she’s doing this again. If your manager is even a little bit decent at her job, there’s a strong chance she’ll want to intervene with both the contractor and the other three coworkers.

If you’re just done with this job and ready to get out regardless, that’s of course your prerogative! But otherwise there’s value in talking to your manager about this conversation before you decide anything.

If you do decide you’re going to leave … well, job searching usually takes some time and there’s a decent chance you could still be there two months from now. But at whatever point you do leave, if they’re blindsided by that when they told you to expect a promotion, that’s not necessarily reasonable on their side. It doesn’t sound like they’ve given you a specific timeline and “you’ll be promoted once funding is approved” can mean anything from “you’ll be promoted in three weeks” to “we hope you’ll be promoted sometime next year” to “there are no solid plans at all and I can’t give you any sort of timeline, but it’s something we’d like to do.” It’s not reasonable to assume someone will pass up other opportunities on that sort of thin promise.

But even if they have a solid timeline in place that you find credible, you’re still allowed to leave! You’d frame it as, “I really appreciate you going to bat to get me a promotion, but another opportunity fell in my lap and was too good to pass up.” Or, “I really appreciate you going to bat to get me a promotion, but I’ve realized staying doesn’t make sense for me because of X / a different role is more aligned with what I want to do / etc.”

3. New employee doesn’t want to work the hours we hired them for

We hired an employee for a specific time slot — evenings and Saturdays. Because of clients’ needs, we were able to move the original schedule earlier (11am-7pm instead of 5pm to midnight). The employee appreciated this. The employee then negotiated for Thursdays off because of regularly being scheduled for Saturdays. Then they asked that the Saturday work be remote, so we offered a trial of on-call that would require them to come in only if necessary. Now the employee is asking that Saturdays be rotational.

I would be sad to lose this employee, but I’m guessing we need to start searching again? The evening and weekend hours of this role were communicated up-front, and I find it frustrating that the employee is regularly coming back to try to renegotiate.

Yes, you’re probably going to need to start searching again, but first just be straightforward with the employee and ask for them to be straightforward in return: “We hired for this role specifically because we need someone to work Saturdays, and that’s not something we can change. Knowing that the job does require working Saturdays and it can’t be rotational, does the position still make sense for you?”

4. Explaining why I’m quitting the federal government

I thought I could stick out this administration, but my job has become a nightmare. After losing roughly half our group, the demands have only grown, particularly with quick deadlines. This, apparently, is in exchange for forcing us to commute every day, imposing a cap on the number of employees exceeding expectations, and changing the primary criteria to remove or demote employees due to performance evaluations.

Is there any exception to not disclosing reasons for quitting and the prohibition on speaking ill of a former employer when that employer explicitly is trying to put its employees in trauma and dread going to work every day? Is it too much to say it’s no longer a good fit, or the costs now are too great?

You can just say, “With everything going on in government work right now, I’m interested in moving to something more stable, and I’m particularly interested in this job because ____.”

You’re falling into the very common trap of thinking you need to give an accurate or comprehensive answer to this question; you don’t, and it’s often not in your best interests to, even when you’re 100% in the right (and even when the employer would know you were likely in the right; you want their focus on why you’d be great for the job they’re hiring for, not whatever bananas drama is happening at your old job).

More here:

how should I explain why I’m leaving my job when the answer is horrible/messy/shocking?

5. My manager is changing my timesheets

I am a non-exempt employee who works in healthcare for a large company that provides a specific contracted service. My hours are unpredictable and vary day by day, week by week. Sometimes I work overtime, although usually I average about 30 hours/week. I punch in/out using an electronic payroll app on a company-provided device. We’ve recently gone through a period with an unusually high patient census and are also understaffed, so more hours and overtime for me.

During this time, I noticed that my paychecks did not seem to accurately reflect the hours that I worked, so I started keeping my own record and then compared it to my punch times on the payroll system. I found that my manager has been editing my timesheets. I believe she is trying to meet (in my opinion, unreasonable) company metrics, but it is extremely disheartening to be working these ridiculous hours to find out that I’m not being compensated for them. In the app, you can see that the time was edited and who did the editing (my manager’s name).

My partner is a manager for a well-known company, and he has a good relationship with his HR and asked for their advice. HR informed him that adjusting employee timesheets is illegal and a firing offense, and it puts the company at risk.

My partner wants me to report this,. One of the reasons I never went into management is because of the politics and pressure involved, but I do love my job and my patients, and at this stage in my career I do not want to face retaliation or the inability to find another position in my field. Then again, I’m feeling anger and frustration at stepping up and working unreasonably long hours when no one else was available, without compensation for all the time that I worked. I’ve always had a good relationship with my manager so there’s the feeling of betrayal as well. My manager has also been in her position for many years, in a role that is notorious for high turnover, so I’m unsure whether the company would even be supportive if I reported. I’ve been thinking about contacting an employment lawyer to help me navigate this situation, especially in the event of retaliation. Honestly, I’d just like to be paid for my time and continue doing the job I love. Since I brought the discrepancies to my manager’s attention, my timesheets have not been touched. But I do wonder if this is happening to others on my team and within my company, and that is weighing on my conscience as well.

You absolutely need to report this to your company. It’s illegal, it’s a liability for them, and you are legally owed that money. It doesn’t matter what your manager’s reasons were for doing it; it’s flatly against the law, and you are being stolen from.

If you’re concerned about retaliation, you don’t need to mention that your manager is the one who did this when you report it. Just say that your paychecks aren’t matching up to the hours you’ve logged and ask that it be investigated and fixed. You don’t need a lawyer to do this; it’s worth involving one if you do start seeing retaliation, but most likely you’ll report it and your company will fix it since the law is black and white on this. If they don’t, then bring in the lawyer.

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