my manager and coworker are fighting, a recommendation I didn’t want, and more

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

1. My manager and coworker are fighting and I’m stuck in the middle

My manager, Rose, is not good at her job. She routinely forgets things, does a terrible job advocating for the department, plays favorites, and isn’t proactive at solving problems. My coworker, Donna, is also not good at her job, but in a personal sense. She’s horrifically burnt out but isn’t taking steps to address it, holds grudges over slights that happened 5+ years ago, and goes from 0 to 100 in her moods. Adding fuel to the fire, Rose is conflict-averse, Donna is conflict-prone. As I’m the newest person in the office without the 10 years of beef these two have, both Rose and Donna have complained about the other to me before.

There have been multiple occasions where Rose and Donna got into a verbal fight. Recently, Rose gave Donna a poor performance review and all hell has broken loose. I only know about this secondhand, from Donna, so I have no idea what the review actually said — Donna feels that Rose is out to get her, though in my opinion parts of the poor review were probably justified. Donna’s been complaining about Rose at every opportunity, while Rose is actively avoiding Donna.

I’m sick and tired of this. Ideally, I’d like to tell both of them to stop bitching, nut up, and just do their damn jobs, but I can’t do that to Rose as she’s my manager and if I do that to Donna, she’ll view it as a personal slight. Donna and I work closely together and I won’t be able to do my job if she’s fighting with me the same way she’s fighting with Rose. How do I navigate this minefield of personal drama that I don’t want to be a part of?

To Donna when she complains about Rose: “I’m sorry you’re having a tough time. Please know I care but it’s affecting my focus so much that I just can’t be your sounding board for it anymore — I’m sorry.” If she views that as a personal slight … well, it sounds like she views a lot of things as a personal slight and that’s probably going to happen between the two of you at some point anyway (if not with this, then with something else). When someone is that volatile, you can never tiptoe around them so perfectly that you never set them off, so do yourself the favor of setting a reasonable boundary. If her reaction prevents you from doing your job, you’d need to take that to Donna — who, yes, sucks at solving problems, but it would still be hers to deal with. If she doesn’t and Donna is truly obstructing you from doing your job, you could escalate it. But if Donna is just visibly upset with you, let that be okay, as long as she’s not openly hostile.

It doesn’t sound like Rose is complaining to you about Donna, but if she ever does: “I should stay out of this, since I have to work closely with her.”

Ultimately, Rose is the bigger problem because she should be managing this entire situation and isn’t — but the day-to-day quality of life stuff is coming from Donna and you have more control over that piece, so focus there.

Related:
my coworker complains all day long

2. I thought I was taking a leadership job — it turned out to be entry-level

I recently left a leadership position at a statewide nonprofit to join the national staff of a much larger nonprofit. I interviewed for this position believing it would be part of one of the major departments’ leadership teams. Titles are pretty standardized across our field, and the title and job description gave the impression that this would be a major internal consultant position, working with multiple chapters nationwide to help them develop metrics, assist with long- and short-term planning, and provide overall guidance. The pay was also commensurate with a leadership position and was far, far more than I was making in my then-position.

During the interview process, which was quite long, I was never interviewed by the same people twice, and in many instances, I was interviewed by people who were quite unfamiliar with the position. When I would inquire about job specifics, I was given the impression that the vagueness was due to the fluidity of the position; the main priority is what the chapters need, and it’s different for each state. I need to emphasize that throughout the process, they mentioned assisting “chapters,” always plural. I talked about broad national programs for the organization and how “strategies I used in X state might work in states Y and Z,” and no one corrected me.

When I started, however, it became clear that I was actually one of multiple “consultants” being hired, and I would be assigned to a single state. It also became clear that much of the “consulting” was grunt work, and that overall this position was an entry-level job for individual chapters embedded in the national organization. All doubts were cleared up when I was given access to some planning documents created last year, in which the original title of the position reflected its entry-level nature. I’m pretty sure they changed the title to attract more qualified candidates.

On the one hand, I am humiliated. I thought I was getting a huge promotion into an exciting and challenging new role on the national level that would launch my career to new heights and provide me with invaluable experience! On the other hand, the money and benefits are fantastic; I have almost doubled my past salary. And while the work is entry-level, the title on my resume would not give that impression. I also am not burdened by managerial responsibilities. When I talked to my wife about this, she was totally surprised that I was upset, because “you are getting paid way more to do far less,” and she does have a point.

What should I do, and how should I be feeling about all this? I feel like I’ve been lied to, and I am not getting the job I thought I was. On the other hand, this is a job I can do with my eyes closed, so should I just ride this out for a while?

Here’s what I’d think about and what I think your wife’s response overlooks: are you bored or likely to become bored in the near- to medium-term future? Are your skills going to stagnate? When you decide you do want to leave this job, will you have accomplishments for your resume that will help you get the job you’ll want after this one? Are you happy to have this break in responsibility or frustrated by the limitations of the role? What’s going on in the organization that caused them to so misrepresent the nature of the job, and is that symptomatic of other frustrations that will be heading your way?

I can’t answer those for you, but those are the questions I’d reflect on in your shoes. And regardless of your answers to them, it’s possible that given the state of the job market and the world right now, you might decide you’re happy to hunker down here for a while and make this work. Or you might decide that while it’s not so bad for right now, the longer you stay, the harder it will be to move on to the sort of job you do want once you’re looking again. There’s no easy answer — but “be happy you’re being paid more to do less” is an oversimplification.

Related:
should I stay in my well-paid job even though I have nothing to do?

3. How should I have handled a recommendation I didn’t want?

Something that happened to me some time ago that I didn’t know how to handle. I’d gone in for an interview for an internship that perfectly aligned with what I wanted to do with my degree. During the interview stage, I ran into a classmate, their current intern. About a week later, she told me she had recommended me for the internship and that she loved my work and how good of a job I’d do at this company.

This would have been great, if I didn’t know that the quality of her work was bad, and that she’d gotten drunk at that company’s Christmas party! (I knew that her work quality was bad due to having a TA-esque role in a class she took, where she did extraordinarily badly.)

I don’t know if that’s the reason I never heard back, but should I have followed up with the manager after finding out she’d recommended me saying that I’m not affiliated with her? Should I have handled the interaction during the interview differently?

Nope, there was nothing you needed to do. First, doing badly in one class doesn’t mean that someone will do badly in an internship. (If what you observed was something like that she had no grasp of foundational concepts, then it’s more likely — but even then, she could have gotten better later. And for all we know, she had other stuff going on that semester that got in her way, but that doesn’t mean she could never do well.)

But even if you knew for sure that her work quality was still bad, there wasn’t anything you needed to do here. Low performers don’t really impact someone else’s chances by recommending them; the employer might not give any weight to her opinion, but they’d be unlikely to hold it against you if you’d made your own good impression. (And really, there’s a good chance they wouldn’t have given much weight to a good intern’s opinion either.)

4. Can you ask to have a vacation day become a sick day if you get sick on your trip?

My family is having a disagreement about work norms, and I’m wondering if I was an overly permissive manager or if my sister-in-law works in a strict environment. (Or somewhere in between. It’s usually somewhere in between!)

My sister-in-law came to visit for a week, and got a really nasty cold the day after she arrived. I’m not talking just feeling icky, she had a fever of 102F, didn’t eat for two days because food didn’t stay down, and basically couldn’t leave her room from sheer exhaustion.

I asked if she was going to reclassify her vacation (or even just the worst couple days) as sick time, because if she had been at home she absolutely would have not been going in. Both she and my spouse looked at me like I was crazy, and I said it didn’t happen often, but I was happy to make the change for my reports if people got really unlucky. Sometimes it happens!

But their response (and she asked a coworker too) make me reconsider how obvious I find the situation. So what’s normal?

It’s a completely acceptable thing to ask about! Some companies will do it and some companies won’t, but there’s nothing outrageous about inquiring to find out. Among companies that do, the idea is that you need real downtime to fully recharge, with all the benefits that brings your employer, and if you’re sick you’re not really recharging.

5. Does my boss not think I can do work I did in a previous job?

I work for government with a boss who is typically very relaxed and flexible with the entire team. I previously worked in higher education doing very difficult stakeholder meeting facilitation for multiple groups every week. My boss knows this and has acknowledged that I have previous years of experience before he hired me.

We were all at a meeting to discuss if we wanted to hire a contractor to do stakeholder meeting facilitation or if we could do it ourselves (it’s way more difficult than just reading off a PowerPoint!). I said that I had done this in a previous job but that it was very hard. This startled everyone on the team (physical reactions) but most people quickly agreed. Then my boss said he’s sure some of us could handle it, while gesturing to my male coworker and looking at him, not me, then said he thinks the stakeholders would want a contractor.

Should I have kept my mouth shut and not said that I did this before? The gesturing at my coworker and looking at him instead of me after what I immediately just said seems like my boss doesn’t believe I could handle it, right?

It sounds more likely that your boss took what you said to indicate that you weren’t enthusiastic about doing it (unless you were explicit that that’s not what you meant). If you want to clear it up, you could follow up with your boss now to clarify (“If we do decide to facilitate the meetings ourselves, it’s something I have experience in and would be interested in doing”), which might be worth doing even if he’s leaning toward a contractor anyway.

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