1. I’m in trouble for occasionally arriving a few minutes late
Regretfully, this was indeed a red flag indicating a toxic workplace. Although I am now routinely 15-20 minutes early every day, my coworkers’ attitudes toward me don’t appear to have changed. In the past week, I’ve overheard my manager calling me “kind of stupid” on a conference call and another coworker accidentally sending me an insulting teams message about me before quickly deleting it (not the first time). Mysteriously, the coffee mugs I keep bringing from home keep getting broken, and either an employee of two decades who trained me on something and then signed off on it being done correctly every week for three months just wasn’t paying attention, or they deliberately trained me wrong to try to get me fired as I was called into my manager’s office for “somehow f***ing this up for an entire fiscal quarter” and put on a performance improvement plan which included feedback about both “asking too many questions” and “not asking enough questions.” In my monthly check-ins with management I’m routinely criticized for not being engaged enough with my colleagues. I wonder why.
Anyway, I’m actively looking for a new job at the moment, hoping to get out before they invent a reason to fire me. I haven’t bothered talking to HR as both times I’ve been fired in my life were immediately preceded by me complaining to HR “anonymously” about a manager’s behavior. There’s really nothing to be done here other than get out before they get rid of me. What a mess.
2. Can I say I can’t come into the office because I have to look after my dog?
For the most part, this hasn’t been an issue over the past few months. My husband and I have been able to schedule our days in the office in a way that works for us and meets our workplace requirements, and we both have flexibility in moving our days around if we need to. While I still mostly do Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in the office, I’m in today (Monday) for a client meeting later, and I knew about it far in advance so my husband and I were able to rearrange our days as needed. He’ll go in Thursday this week and I’ll work from home on that day. But if I’d been asked to do it on Friday, it wouldn’t have been possible to rearrange the days at such short notice — not just because of the dog, but because it also wouldn’t have been enough notice for my husband (who has to book a desk in work, would have to rearrange his schedule, etc.).
There also haven’t really been any other situations like the one I described in my email, thank goodness. I get plenty of notice when I have to be in the office or when I have a client meeting on a day that isn’t one of my Designated Days. So all’s well that ends well!
(I will also say – I don’t live in the U.S., and I find work/life balance much better in Ireland where I live and work. I think when I wrote in I was more concerned about refusing to do things last-minute on my days working from home rather than about the fact that I do have to look after my dog. Most people here very much understand responsibilities outside work and I’ve come to learn that at least in my workplace, my outside responsibilities, even sometimes including my dog, are very much reasonable excuses for last-minute requests.)
Commenter Hush42’s answer was the most helpful: “I think that the fact that OP was given almost no notice regarding the Monday meeting is a factor. I don’t think it’s always reasonable to say, “No, I can’t ever come in on a Monday because of my dog” but it is reasonable to require advance notice so that they can make appropriate arrangements for the dog for that day.
In my company, we only have one WFH day and it’s always Fridays. I wouldn’t bat an eye if I asked my team members on Thursday to come in on Friday and they said no, I have to take care of my dog. But if I gave them a weeks notice, then I would definitely question it. I think that there has only been one Friday in the year since we’ve been back in the office where I required them to come in, and they were given lots advance notice.”
3. I’m embarrassed when people ask how my job search is going (#4 at the link)
I wrote in this past January about being embarrassed to tell people I was struggling with job searching at a time when there was constant headline news about how desperate companies were to hire. My job search ended up lasting about six months in total, with a lot of false starts, but in the end I got two job offers in the same week and am really happy with the position I accepted! The search felt never-ending while I was in it, but now feels like a pretty short period of my life overall.
Kudos to anyone out there currently in the thick of it with job hunting, it really is a terrible experience that makes you feel disconnected from humanity (how many form fields can one person be expected to fill out on an application they will never hear another word about!) and I know how hard you are working for what feels like no reward.
4. Hiring for a job requiring a religious background (#4 at the link)
I used the script and advice from you and other readers, focusing on candidates’ knowledge of the religion and not on their faith. We ended up hiring someone who I found out later actually was no longer a believer but had extensive knowledge on the topic and brought everything else we needed to the table, enabling us to create a great product. Thank you for the good advice.
#trouble #occasionally #arriving #minutes #late #Manager
