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“coworker uses icebreakers in every meeting, is it wrong to fake enthusiasm in a job interview, and more” plus 4 more Ask a Manager

“coworker uses icebreakers in every meeting, is it wrong to fake enthusiasm in a job interview, and more” plus 4 more Ask a Manager


coworker uses icebreakers in every meeting, is it wrong to fake enthusiasm in a job interview, and more

Posted: 21 May 2018 09:03 PM PDT

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

1. My coworker uses icebreakers in every meeting

One of my coworkers runs a lot of the meetings at my workplace. He’s good at his job and generally well-liked, but I’ve noticed that he almost always schedules an icebreaker for meetings — even small ones with only three or four people. They don’t usually have anything to do with the meeting topic, more along the lines of “Rank these breakfast foods.”

I do like to get to know my coworkers, but I don’t think icebreakers before meetings are particularly effective in that regard. I can see their value in situations where people don’t know each other or there might be tension, but when it comes to quick meetings with people I already work with regularly, they just feel like a waste of time. Is there a purpose they serve here that I’m not seeing?

Nope. The idea with icebreakers is supposed to be to give people some comfort and familiarity with people who they don’t know well or, in some cases, to switch them into a more relaxed mode than they might be in for most of the work they do together. It’s weird to do them for every meeting in your office, and especially weird to routinely do them for meetings or three or four people. I’d be annoyed by the waste of time too.

I suppose it’s possible that most people in your office enjoy them (do they?), in which case you might not really have standing to ask for them to stop in general, but certainly in meetings with just a few people it would be reasonable for you to say at the start, "I'm crunched for time today — can we skip the icebreaker and get straight into the budget figures?"

2. Is it wrong to fake enthusiasm during an interview?

I’m considering leaving my current job and have been sending out job applications to get a feel for what is out there. I just had an interview and I think I did well and may get an offer. However, I’m not sure if I want to accept the job. It’s not because the job post misrepresented the actual job, it’s just that I’ve changed my mind on what I want in my next job. I came to to this realization before the interview, but went ahead with the interview just in case it changed my mind (it didn’t).

During the interview, I was asked twice if it sounded like the kind of role that I would be interested in, and both times I responded with an enthusiastic “yes.” I was generally quite warm and enthusiastic through the whole interview.

Was it okay to fake enthusiasm or should I have been more honest in the interview? Was there a better way of handling this? I’m still not ready to say that I absolutely wouldn’t accept a job offer, but I’m leaning heavily towards a no.

If it was a big company or through a recruiter, I may not feel as bad, but it’s a small company with the owner conducting the interviews, so everything feels a bit more personal here.

As an interviewer, I always want people to be honest with me about their enthusiasm level, because it helps me figure out if I want to hire them for the job or not.

But as someone who advises job candidates, I will tell you that if you don't appear enthusiastic about a job, it's likely to take you out of the running.

What you did was fine. While you're still in the process of figuring out if you want the job or not, it's fine to default to a generally enthusiastic stance. That's just smart to do, so that you're not taken out of the running.

That said, you don't want to fake enthusiasm across the board. If you know for sure that you don't want to do X or Y and that you wouldn't take a job that focused heavily on those, you'd be shooting yourself in the foot if you faked enthusiasm about those; that's a recipe for ending up in a job you're not going to be happy in. But seeming generally interested in the job itself, while you're still in the process of figuring out if you really want it? That's just savvy interviewing.

3. How to set boundaries with clients for my days off

I work in a non-traditional service industry type job that involves going to my clients’ homes (think childcare, but if it were extremely lucrative). In my line of work, forming close emotional relationships with clients is very much the norm, and generally this is something I appreciate about my job. Because of this closeness, however, it can often be difficult to set boundaries about the hours I am and am not available to work.

Because my job is non-traditional, my schedule is too, but I do still take two days off in a row each week because I have to do laundry and go to the store and generally have a life. I frequently get requests to work on these days and I always reply simply that I’m not available, but often clients will press for details or pressure me to work anyway. It’s difficult for me to say no, especially in situations in which they are very reliant on me, but when I don’t take my normal “weekend,” my mental health really suffers. How can I be clear – but polite – about the time that I need to myself, and how much of an obligation do I have to explain how I’m planning to use that time?

For reference, I’m not a freelancer. I work for a company which assigns and manages clients, but I set my own schedule and I have a lot of flexibility. Unfortunately, though they are generally good employers, they aren’t very supportive in this area – employees at my level earn them LOTS of money, so they basically want us to work as much as we can, and they’d happily have me work from noon to midnight (which I do from time to time) every day of the week.

You don't need to explain anything about how you're planning to use that time. You should just be able to say, "I'm sorry, I'm not available on Sunday, but I can see you on Monday if you'd like." And if someone pushes, you can say, "I'm fully booked then" or "don't have any time open then." You don't need to specify "that's my day off" if that seems to invite people to push you to make an exception for them; sticking with some version of "that time is booked up" is likely to be harder to argue with. (And it's not a lie — that time is booked up; it's just booked with your weekend, rather than another client. And you don't need to explain that.)

4. Can I treat a job fair like a networking event?

This may end up being a little niche, because I’m in teaching–the hiring cycle is pretty specific. Private and charter schools February-early May, public schools late May-July, not very good schools August. I just graduated and was feeling pretty anxious about finding work, so I started sending out my resume early, and have been lucky enough to receive a few offers from charters, one of which I’m likely going to accept. However, long term, I want to be working in the public school system–I just can’t afford to turn down the definite job until my student loans are paid off.

I got an email from a recruiter about a public school job fair in three weeks. I will almost certainly have accepted a job by then, and I don’t want to waste people’s time, but I’d love to attend anyway and start getting a feel for the schools and principals in my area, what their timelines are, what they look for, etc., so that in a year or three, when I’m making the jump, I’ll be more prepared and maybe have established some relationships. Should I go and just explain that I’m not looking for the 2018-2019 school year? Should I print up a special version of my resume that explains this at the top? Do I just say nothing and wait to explain if I’m offered any interviews? I definitely don’t want to burn any bridges, because teaching in this area is a very who-you-know job!

I can't speak to teaching in particular, but for job fairs in general, I wouldn't do this. For one thing, most job fairs aren't great for networking, as they tend to be staffed by HR or relatively junior people, who aren't necessarily the people you're hoping to network with — and they are probably not thinking about hiring that's a few years off. But also, if your new school has a table there, there's a risk that they'll spot you there and be uneasy that you're at a job fair when you're already committed to working for them (and sure, you could explain it, but it's potentially going to alarm them). I'd look for other ways to network instead of this, like other events that are likely to attract people in your field who you'd like to meet.

5. My boss said I could work from home on Fridays … but it seems to have disappeared

I’m a woman, so is my boss. She has several kids, I have one almost-toddler. Shortly after I returned from maternity leave, she told me: “It’s fine with me if you work from home every Friday. When I first had kids, I wanted to reduce hours but realized I’d just reduce my pay with the same work expectations, so I negotiated working from home on Fridays.”

So that’s pretty cool, right? Except … nothing was formalized, I felt uncomfortable taking her up on an informal offer so didn’t take full advantage, I’m basically a coward, and that offer seems to have disappeared. For example, my baby was sick (just a slight fever so had to stay home from daycare) on a Friday and I asked if I could work from home rather than take a personal day. She said no.

Can I negotiate that work-from-home deal back? Should I look for another job that is actually flexible or part-time? My salary is a fraction of my spouse’s and cutting back on my salary wouldn’t be a big deal for our overall household income.

It's possible that the reason she said no to that particular request was that she doesn't want you to work from home as a substitute for child care — because with very young kids, that generally means you won't be getting much work done. With the original offer, she might have assumed your baby would be at day care while you were working from home.

But if you're interested in getting that work-from-home-on-Fridays offer back, ask about it directly! For example: "When I returned from maternity leave, you told me it was fine for me to work from home on Fridays if I wanted to. At the time I wasn't sure yet exactly what would end up making sense so I didn't take you up on it, but I wonder if that's still possible. If it is, I'd love to experiment with it."

And then if she says yes, start doing it right away so that it gets normalized as a thing you do.

coworker uses icebreakers in every meeting, is it wrong to fake enthusiasm in a job interview, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

what to do if you hate your job

Posted: 21 May 2018 11:05 AM PDT

I wrote this for LinkedIn’s Weekend Essay this weekend.

If you're miserable at work, you're not alone. Having written Ask a Manager for more than a decade now, I've answered questions from literally thousands of people who hate their jobs. Whether it's due to a difficult boss, unpleasant colleagues, mind-numbing work, or a toxic culture, there are a lot of people toiling away at jobs they'd rather not be in.

The unsettling reality is that even if you do everything right in screening your jobs, you can still end up in a work situation that makes you unhappy. The great boss who you were so excited to work with could move on a few months after you start, and her replacement could end up being a disaster. Your office could have budget cuts that leave you with an unmanageable workload. You could be assigned a new client who turns your dream job into a nightmare. Or, if you're like a lot of people, you might just end up in a job that sounded amazing in the interview but fell drastically short of your expectations once you started.

If you find yourself in this situation, step one is to get really clear about exactly what the problem is. Is your boss a hovering micromanager who doesn't give you any autonomy, despite your years of experience? Or maybe the problem is your coworkers – is your work life lonely because you haven't been able to form any rapport with your colleagues? Maybe it's the work itself; you might have signed up expecting to do X but ended up doing Y, or the workload might be way too high or so low that you're bored for hours every week. Or maybe it's your company culture since not every culture will be a fit for every person. Maybe your office is slow-moving and resistant to change, while you're more entrepreneurial and need a culture that values that, or maybe it rewards people who spend their off-hours golfing with the company bigwigs and you're not up for that. Or maybe upon reflection you'll realize that the problem isn't this particular job, but rather the idea of having to work in general that's making you miserable.

Once you've zeroed in on what the problem is, the next step is to figure out if it's worth trying to fix it. If you have fundamental issues with your company's culture, that's not likely something you'll be able to change. But if the issue is, say, that your workload is too high and you're in danger of burning out, you might actually be able to get relief by talking with your boss. Not always – but if your boss is reasonable and has a track record of taking people's concerns seriously, it's worth raising the issue and seeing if anything changes. And if nothing does, at least then you'll know for sure; you'll have raised the issue, learned the problem isn't going to go away, and then can make decisions for yourself from a place of greater information.

Of course, sometimes it can be hard to know if something is fixable. In the past, I've pulled complaints out of people who weren't speaking up on their own because they were certain that the thing they disliked couldn't be fixed, and yet once I knew about it, I was able to resolve the problem relatively quickly. So even an issue seems insurmountable to you, it might still be worth raising – because your manager has a different vantage point and might be more able to address the problem than you realized. Not always, of course, but if you're unhappy enough that you're likely to leave over whatever's bothering you, it might be worth a conversation.

That said, if your manager isn't open to feedback, tends to punish people for rocking the boat, or just isn't particularly reasonable, you might rightly conclude that there's not much to be gained by going that route. And other times, even if your manager would be receptive, you might realize that there are so many problems contributing to your unhappiness that fixing a few of them won't be enough.

Once you have a more solid idea of whether your problems with your job can be resolved or not, you can move on to figuring out what to do next. Even if the problems can't or won't be fixed, that doesn't automatically mean that you should leave. At this stage in your thinking, you should step back and take stock of your situation, being as brutally honest with yourself as you can. Things to think about: What are you getting out of the situation if you stay (for example, pay, benefits, a flexible schedule, a great commute, interesting work, professional opportunities, and so forth)? How likely are you to find those things somewhere else? Do the advantages of staying outweigh the negatives? What are the negatives of leaving (such as missed opportunities or having multiple short-term stays on your resume), and how do you weigh those in this calculation?

In other words, this decision should rarely be as simple as "I hate my job so I should leave." Sure, sometimes that might be the answer. But other times you might realize that if you can get through two years of this job, you can parlay it into something much better … or sometimes it might be as simple as deciding that while yes, you don't like the work, you love your salary and your 10-minute commute and you can reframe your thinking so that you're less unhappy day-to-day. Getting really clear in your head that you're choosing to stay because you've calculated that the trade-offs are worth it to you can sometimes make the situation much more bearable – probably because it reinforces that you do have choices and some control. Yes, my boss is a jerk, you can think, but I'm choosing to stick it out for now because I'm paid well and I love my commute. I can always change my mind later, but for now this makes sense for me.

Or, you might come out of this calculation with a really clear sense that you do indeed need to move on. You might decide that the things that bother you are serious problems, aren't going to change, and aren't worth the pay and other benefits you're getting by staying. That's a good outcome too. The idea is just to be really clear-eyed about what you are and aren't willing to accept, how you weigh all the different factors in the situation, and which matter most to you.

If you go through this mental exercise and still aren't sure if you should stay or go, one middle-ground option is to try launching a casual job search. Look around at what job postings are out there, put out some feelers to people in your network, talk to some recruiters. You'll probably start getting some useful data about the market that will push you in one direction or the other. You might find, for example, that the market is booming for people with your skills and that it'll be relatively easy to find a new position without the problems at your current job. Or who knows, after seeing what else is out there, you might see your current job in a new, more positive light. But either way, you'll get more data, which will help you make better decisions.

And of course, if you do decide to leave, it's crucial not to be in such a rush to get out of your current job that you skimp on doing your due diligence about the new one. When you're miserable at work, it's very easy to grasp at the first life raft that comes along – but leaping too hastily can mean you end up somewhere else where you're unhappy too. Taking time to be really thoughtful and deliberative about where you end up next, even if it slows down your departure a bit, will pay off in your next position.

what to do if you hate your job was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

come see me in NYC on Tuesday night

Posted: 21 May 2018 10:30 AM PDT

If you’re in New York City, come see me on Tuesday night (tomorrow)! I’m speaking and will be doing lots of audience Q&A and signing books, and you should come! I’m told there will be wine.

Details and tickets here.

come see me in NYC on Tuesday night was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

my boss’s dog keeps attacking my coworkers

Posted: 21 May 2018 09:30 AM PDT

A reader writes:

I work for a small nonprofit in a city where many offices allow dogs. The organization I work for is still run by its founders, and they have maintained nearly full control of all operations since the organization’s inception. In other words, the place is pretty dysfunctional.

The co-founders adopted an abused dog who has serious behavior problems. When they tried to leave him at home, he ended up destroying their furniture, so now they bring him to work.

Normally I love dogs, but this one is not my favorite. For one, he has horrible gas, which infuses the office with a rank stench that has made me vomit. More seriously, he bites people. He bit my coworker badly enough that she had to go to the ER. The two co-founders paid for her medical bills, but still bring in the dog. He has bitten two other coworkers — seriously enough to break the skin, but not enough to require medical attention. The dog hasn’t bitten me, but has snapped at me when I go into the CEO’s office, and I am terrified of him. We don’t have a dedicated HR function, and the person responsible does whatever the co-founders tell him to do.

Whenever I see this dog, I react fearfully, which infuriates the two co-founders, as if I were personally insulting them. I also feel like I should be able to go to a job that has nothing to do with pets without fear of getting bitten by a dog — we are not a dog rescue or humane society. What should I do?

I answer this question over at Inc. today, where I'm revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here.

my boss’s dog keeps attacking my coworkers was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

I’m sick of being the office printer lady

Posted: 21 May 2018 07:59 AM PDT

A reader writes:

In our small office of about 10 people, I happen to sit the closest to our only printer, located in a room about 20 feet from my desk. The printer will display an error message on the screen when there is an issue (paper gets jammed, the printer is out of paper, etc.) Since I sit so close to the printer, every time someone in our office goes to retrieve their print job and sees an error message on the screen, they immediately call for me to come help (I assume because I sit so close to the printer), without even trying to solve the issue themselves. Nine times out of 10, these are extremely basic errors to resolve, like those mentioned above (paper jam, printer is out of paper, etc.), and not to mention, the screen explicitly shows directions on how to resolve the error. To be clear, I have no problem helping if it is actually a difficult error to resolve, but that rarely is the case.

In the almost year I’ve sat at this desk, I have always come to help resolve the errors when called upon. However, it’s getting really irritating that everyone, with the exception of a couple people in the office, are so dependent on me to solve basic printer issues. It’s really distracting when I’m in the middle of working on something.

I’ve always been a “yes woman” and feel bad declining to help. It usually only takes me 30 seconds to a minute to get up and go fix the issue, so it feels rude to say no. I’ve tried to use language like, "Next time you see this error message, this is what you do.” Nonetheless, the same people will call on me for help the next time the same issue occurs. It’s gotten to the point where when people call on me for printer help, they say something like, "Hey Ayra, you’re the printer guru, can you come help me?” I don’t want to be known as the “printer guru” just because I happen to sit so close to it. Is there a way I can put a stop to the constant beckoning, or should I just suck it up and continue to be the office printer lady?

My job is not admin. I am an inside sales representative. We actually have a designated admin person, but I have never seen him called upon to help with printer issues. I previously sat in another part in the office for two years (and actually WAS in a role that could be considered an admin role at that time), and was never approached then for this sort of thing.

You can and should say no to this, just like you could and should say no to someone asking you to do their filing for them or asking you to fill out their expense reports. It's not in any way your job, and your proximity to the printer doesn't make it your job.

There's a danger, though, that your willingness to do it is making it your job — that by helping, you're training people to think that this is part of your role, and so it's important that you stop.

Starting immediately, when people ask for help with the printer, say, "Sorry, I'm in the middle of something and can't help. There should be instructions on the screen."

Bonus points if you look really distracted when you say this — slowly pull your eyes away from your computer screen as if you're right in the middle of something that they're interrupting. More bonus points if you look and sound confused about why they're asking you.

If anyone pushes back — saying "it'll just take a second" or "you're so good at this" or whatever — then say, "I'm busy, but (admin person) can probably help you."

If you feel weird about suddenly being unavailable to help, (a) you shouldn't, because this was never your job, but (b) if it'll help you feel more comfortable, you can say something like, "I've realized people have started turning to me to deal with the printer because I sit here, but they should really check with (admin) if they need help since it interrupts my focus. Thanks for understanding!”

Do this enough, and people will get out of the habit of asking you.

A bit about this: “It usually only takes me 30 seconds to a minute to get up and go fix the issue, so it feels rude to say no." It's not rude to say no when something is clearly not your job and the person should be handling the issue themselves. It might only be 30 seconds, but it's presumably interrupting your focus on other things — and even if it's not, it's just not reasonable for people to think they can turn to you for basic tasks that are no more yours than theirs (and in fact are theirs).

It's great to be helpful, but you should be helpful about things involving your job. It’s not helpful to your career to be known as "Jane the printer lady" — you want to be known as "Jane the great salesperson" or "Jane who keeps blowing her numbers out of the water" or "Jane who knows everything about our product line" or so forth.

And even if you're known as those things too, the fact that you're irritated by this is reason enough to put a stop to it. Fortunately, you can — this is within your power to resolve, although it may take some time. You've just got to resolve to keep saying no.

I’m sick of being the office printer lady was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

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