It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. Do my full-time coworkers think I’m a lady of leisure because I work part-time?
I work part-time at an elite private high school that my oldest child attends. How our very middle-class family ended up with a kid at this school is a long story, but please know it was a necessary last resort for my kid’s mental health.
Very luckily, just before school started, a part-time receptionist position opened up at the school and I practically ran to apply, as it comes with a partial tuition remission. I was nervous about this school. I thought it might be stuffy and elitist. I was so happy to discover this to not be true at all! My kid is happy at the school and I love working there! It’s only two days a week.
At work, I make sure I go above and beyond to be a top notch receptionist. I recently heard feedback from a coworker that my name came up in a meeting of the school administration about what a great hire I was and what an asset I’ve become to the front office.
The only problem is that there are a lot of affluent parents and I think some of my coworkers assume I am one of them. Every Tuesday, before I leave for the week, several people wave to me and say, “Enjoy your LONNNNNNNNG weekend!” or “Gosh, I wish it was MY Friday too.” At first I just laughed it off, but it’s been almost a year, and it’s every week. It’s getting old.
Do they think I’m this woman of leisure? If it matters, my clothes are from Old Navy and Target and my car is a not-fancy station wagon that’s older than my kid! On the days I’m not here, I’m taking care of a child with intensive medical needs, tutoring my oldest so she can keep up at school, cooking, cleaning, driving (my husband travels and is gone the majority of each week) and at night after my kids are in bed, I do freelance work. I average about 4-5 hours of sleep a night. I work HARD. To me, my weekend is the two days I’m at the school! They are the quietest, most relaxing days I have. I get to sit down!
I know I’m taking it too personally, right? Who cares what these people think? I guess I just don’t get why people would say something like that to someone they don’t really know? How about “Have a good week!” and leave it at that? After a year, would you snap and say something?
I think you’re reading too much into it! Maybe they think you’re a lady of leisure, or maybe they don’t. But either way, their comments almost certainly aren’t meant to be pointed barbs about the luxurious lifestyle they imagine you have. The comments sound more akin to hackneyed office commentary like “is it Friday yet?” or “another day in paradise!” — the cliche phrases that get thrown around every office that are really just a way of saying “ugh, work, amirite.”
But if it really bothers you, one option is to share more about your life with your colleagues — since if they get to know you better, they might still make the comments but you’ll probably be less likely to read an “enjoy your riches” subtext into them. But you could also just laugh and say, “Yeah, right. It’s way more relaxing here than at home.” (Although writing that last one out, I’m second-guessing it; you don’t want to sound like you’re minimizing their own jobs compared to your home responsibilities, particularly in a cultural context where moms who work often feel judged by moms who don’t and vice versa.)
2. Jobs with no negotiation and a huge salary range
I recently came across a job listing that stated they would be using a salary algorithm to determine compensation and would not be allowing any negotiation. I found this a little odd, especially since the range given for the position was quite large ($145,000-$225,000). The organization gives signs of valuing equity and inclusion (generous PTO and six months paid parental leave, explicit professional development benefits outlined in the job posting), so it feels like this is their attempt to ensure all applicants get treated fairly in determining compensation. Am I right that this is a little off-base, especially since they weren’t clear what variables are fed to the algorithm? Or is this the way all jobs should be looking to make salary negotiations more fair?
I have no problem with not allowing negotiation if they’re clear up-front about what a job pays and the initial posting is both accurate and thorough; people can then decide whether or not they’re interested in applying.
But a range this big? Whether negotiation is possible or not, they need to explain what skills and experience would get you placed where in that range (and the larger the range, the more important that is). Clearly they know because they’ve programmed their algorithm with it. Telling people, “Our offer will be take-it-or-leave-it and, by the way it could fall anywhere within an $80,000 spread” is BS — and a good way to make a lot of candidates question whether they want to invest time in interviewing. (If they tell you where you would fall in their range during the first phone screen, I’m less annoyed, but it’s still not good practice.)
3. Covid precautions at a client dinner
I am a high-performing WFH employee at a very small company. I take more Covid precautions in my daily life than anyone else at this company (I technically am high-risk but with a very common condition). When the team gets together, I wear a mask, and the rest of the team has seen this but never commented. In a few weeks, a client is coming to town and a few members of my team are taking them out to dinner. Client management like this isn’t in the scope of my work, but I anticipate being included in this invite.
I do not want to go and want to explain that any precautions I would take at this dinner (mask when not eating, portable air purifier) would look “weird” and run counter to the dinner’s goal of soothing and retaining clients. Is there a way for me to communicate this clearly without making it a “big deal” in such a small company? (We do not have a formal HR department.) I have a yearly review scheduled for the same week and don’t want this to occupy mindshare.
“Because I’m high-risk for Covid, I’d have to mask and bring a portable air purifier. From a client relations perspective, my sense is it would be better for me to sit this one out so that my precautions aren’t the focus.”
Also, if you’d feel safer not going even if they want you to come despite this warning, then I’d skip that and just say that because you’re high-risk, you’re avoiding indoor dining with large groups (if that’s true).
4. My boss told me not leave documents out — is her reason correct?
My boss has me filing work order documents, I left two folders on my desk to work on the next day. When I came in the next morning, she told me that I needed to make sure to put the folders away always, and not keep them on my desk because if we got randomly audited she would get in trouble.
I don’t know if this is true or she used it as an excuse to have me keep the files in the drawers. I would just like to know if we would get in trouble if we were suddenly randomly audited and work order files were found outside of the cabinet.
Sure, depending on the contents of the documents and if they’re confidential, it’s possible that an audit could take issue with them being left in the open. It’s also possible that your boss just doesn’t like documents left out and is borrowing the authority of the auditor rather than owning her preference, who knows.
More to the point, though, it doesn’t really matter! If your boss asks you to store documents a certain way, you should store them that way. Unless your boss is asking something unreasonable or unrealistic, you generally need to do your job the way she asks you to. (That doesn’t mean there’s no room for pushback if you have a reason for wanting to do it differently. But ultimately it’s her call.)
5. Is it legal not to pay someone if HR’s software fails?
A weird situation, and for legal context all of this is happening at a university in Massachusetts. I’m just so angry, and I can’t tell if I have a right to be angry or if HR is correct.
We hired a student in May, but HR’s software made a mistake and only hired her for September. The student, bless her heart, didn’t tell us about this until three pay periods had passed, and we, of course, emailed HR to ask them to fix this. They, in their “wisdom,” hired her and put her on the normal pay period as she had just missed the cutoff, so she will now have not been paid for two months.
I have been emailing back and forth with HR asking them to pay her sooner than the normal payroll, or make her whole beyond what she is owed, but they keep insisting that because she was only hired at the official time there is no reason to. I say, however, that if their software makes a mistake that does not mean that she was not hired, and she is owed her money as soon as possible and with restitution.
Honestly, I am going to continue to suggest to the student that she work with her union to file a wage complaint, but am I crazy? Does a software mistake on HR’s part mean that this student was never “hired” and therefore does not need to be paid as if HR made a mistake?
You are right and HR is wrong. Employers are legally required to pay employees within specific time periods set out by state law, and “our software messed it up” doesn’t release them from that obligation. Here’s what Massachusetts’s pay deadlines are.
Caveat: government sometimes excludes themselves from the employment rules they lay out for everyone else, so if this is a public university you’d need to check whether they’re exempt from this (although I doubt they are). Either way, I suggest saying to HR, “State law requires us to pay wages owed within X days of the pay period ending. She’d be within her rights to file a wage complaint with the state if we don’t comply with the law.”
Also, if you’ve been dealing with the same HR person through all of this, consider escalating it over their head.
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