Posted April 8Apr 8 comment_9746 This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. Should I check on my boss when she’s late to work? I have autism and this falls into the realm of social norms that I struggle to navigate. My department is made up of just my supervisor and myself. We’re in public-facing roles and our office is open 12 hours a day, so we alternate shifts. Each day one of us opens and one of us comes in four hours later and then closes for the day. On the days my supervisor closes, she sometimes comes in late with no notice. I’m currently sitting at my desk wondering if I should check in with her because she was supposed to be here 45 minutes ago. She’s in her late 60s and lives alone, so it’s not outside the realm of possibility that something could have happened and I’d be the only person to realize it. She’s a bit prickly and guards her personal time carefully, though, so I don’t want to intrude if she’s just choosing to sleep in or run an errand on the way to the office. When I’ve made comments to her in the past about wondering if I should have texted her to make sure everything is okay, she has brushed it off and seemed annoyed so I let it go. At what point is it my responsibility to make sure she’s okay? I don’t want to reach out to her manager because I don’t want to get her in trouble. She’s really good at her job and is the sort of person who never stops working once she’s here so I don’t think it’s a big deal for her to come in a bit late. It doesn’t impact my ability to get my job done. I just don’t know the etiquette around checking up on her when she’s not here. It’s not your responsibility to make sure she’s okay if she’s just an hour or two late, and she’s been annoyed when you’ve indicated concern in the past — plus you know she has a pattern of sometimes coming in late without notice, so it doesn’t need to set off alarm bells when she does it. So from this point forward, assume all is fine unless it’s close to the end of your shift (like within an hour) and she’s not there; it doesn’t sound like she’s typically that late and so that would be an aberration that you could treat differently (plus, it raises a looming coverage issue that you’d be right to flag). 2. My staff wants me to attend events with them — but it’s not my job I am a manager of primarily part-time staff. They are the outreach team, and I oversee outreach in addition to a bunch of other duties. My problem is that I seem to have done too good a job making them feel like they’re my first priority, because during the mid-year check-in (which was done by anonymous survey), multiple staff complained that I am not doing enough to support them because I am not actively attending outreach events like they do. I check in periodically but I don’t spend the whole four-hour shift, with them — probably only about a half hour as I do rounds, check in, and see if they need anything, etc. But the thing is, it’s absolutely NOT my job to actively participate in the outreach events. That would amount to about 20 hours of my work week, which simply is not feasible considering my other responsibilities. But everything I try to think of how to phrase “it’s not my job to do that” it’s feels like a deflection or like I’m trying not avoid taking ownership. How do I handle this? I’m thinking of just printing my list of job duties and sharing it but that feels passive aggressive. Help! I think your opening for this conversation will be easier if you focus more on the fact that they feel unsupported and less on the specific thing they’re proposing as a solution to that. Talk with each of them and say you’ve received the feedback that people would feel more supported if you attended more outreach events, explain you can’t do that because you’re also charged with doing XYZ and your job is specifically designed not to include time for attending events so you can handle other priorities, and ask if they can brainstorm with you about other ways for them to get the support that currently feels lacking. If it’s literally just a matter of wanting you at events and they don’t really feel unsupported beyond that, this conversation will bring that out — and hopefully help them understand why you can’t do that. But it’s possible that you’ll hear they wanted you at more events because, I don’t know, the public asks questions that they don’t know how to answer, or there’s not enough coverage for them to leave their booth for bathroom breaks, or who knows what. They might be thinking the solution is “we need Jane here more often,” whereas you might have a dozen other ways you can solve those problems once you know they exist. Either way, approaching it as if the problem is “people feel unsupported” and not just “they want me there too much” should make it easier to solve. 3. My colleague is using parts of my resume as their own I used to work for one of the agencies that the current administration has gutted. It was a great place to work and many employees stayed there for a long time, so they haven’t been on the job market in a while. My field is small, so I shared my resume with any old coworkers who asked in the hopes that it’d help them get their resumes up-to-date. One former coworker openly told me they stole my formatting and alluded to copying things like the awards, too! I was too shocked to say anything, but I wish I had, because I don’t know the extent to which they ripped off my work. Now my agency is up on the chopping block and in this small field, I’m inevitably applying to the same places they are. I have asked to see their resume, but they demurred, instead offering generic job search tips. While I know there are only so many ways you can format a resume, I don’t know if I’m applying to places that have already seen “my” resume (whether just format or contents as well), I don’t even know if the former coworker bothered to change the typeface! Do I need to rebuild my resume from scratch? What would you do here? Their copying your formatting is no big deal — people copy other resumes’ formatting all the time and that’s not going to set off any alarm bells for an employer and it’s definitely not going to make them think they’ve already seen “your” resume before. But if they’re listing awards that they didn’t receive, that’s wildly unethical! It still doesn’t mean that you need to somehow rebuild your resume to avoid having similar content (and presumably more than one person can receive those awards over time) but if your coworker is directly competing with you for jobs, claiming your accomplishments as their own would be extra awful. As for what to do, don’t worry about the formatting at all, but you could go back to them and say, “Hey, when you said you copied my awards, do you mean you claimed awards that you didn’t actually receive? If so, can you correct that for both our sakes? You could end up having a job offer pulled over it once they do a background check, and I of course didn’t show you my resume intending for you to copy the actual content.” If you want, you could add, “And I don’t appreciate you doing that when we’re applying for the same positions.” 4. Airline mix-up means I’m missing my first day of work I am out of state, and the airline had a mix-up with my ticket. I am set to start work Monday at a new job and now I can’t fly back home until Monday. No other option. What is the likelihood that they will “fire” me before I even start due to this? I have left a voicemail explaining the situation to my new supervisor already, but I’m worried. I didn’t get this in time to answer it before Monday but: they’re not likely to tell you “never mind then” just because of an airline snafu. Stuff happens. Decent employers know that. Exceptions to this would be if you had already seemed flaky to them before now and this was a final straw moment, like you had already rescheduled multiple interviews with little notice, or if you’d already asked to push your start date back a couple of times. (That said, I admit to being curious about what “the airline had a mix-up with my ticket” means! If it was their mistake, I’d think you could push pretty hard for them to find you a seat on another airline — but by the time this is publishing, it will be past the point where that would be helpful.) 5. How to list contractor to employee on your resume I’ve recently gotten a new job and started as an employee after a few months as a contractor. As a contractor, I was employed through a completely different staffing company. I have the same title, team, and responsibilities, but now I’m employed directly through the company. I’m not sure how to list that on my resume, if only because I’m pretty sure the staffing company would probably have to be the one to verify employment, etc, during that time. I’m not planning on job searching anytime son, but I like to keep my resume up to date. I would do it like this: Taco Institute, Taco Strategy Coordinator, July 2024 – present (contracted through Tasty Foods Contracting July – November 2024, then converted to employee) * accomplishment * accomplishment * accomplishment View the full article
