It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. Elderly employee isn’t doing his job
I work in a public library with a part-time employee who is 85. He needs the paycheck and we all feel empathy for him, but he is losing his hearing, forgets things and generally doesn’t do much that he doesn’t feel like doing. He wants a lot of attention and people to listen to him, his health troubles, and what he’s going to have for dinner and has little initiative in helping out with daily tasks. Our director seems lost as to how to address his aging and decline. How do managers address an aging employee who should retire but won’t?
By holding them accountable to meeting performance and conduct standards the same way they would at any age — meaning that in this case your boss should be telling your coworker that he needs to be working on XYZ, and addressing with him why ABC hasn’t happened, and asking him to stop distracting people while they’re working. At some point in those conversations there should be a way to say, “What we need from you if you want to stay in this role is ___. Can you commit to doing that or is the job not matching up with what you’re looking for anymore?”
Of course, that requires a manager who’s willing to have hard conversations, which is … not all managers. But it gets easier if you see it through a performance/job alignment lens rather than a needs-to-retire lens.
2. Can you use sick days for car trouble?
I’m curious on your opinion of whether or when it’s acceptable to use sick days for car trouble.
I recently had some mechanical trouble where my car wasn’t starting reliably. I scheduled an appointment with a mechanic for one of my days off, when I had time to be without the car for a day or two. They looked at the car, said it started fine for them and nothing was wrong, and sent me away without fixing anything.
Halfway through my next work week, the issue came back as I was trying to leave for work and my car wouldn’t start at all. I was contemplating calling an Uber to get to work when it finally started and I was able to drive to work. While chatting with a coworker, “Jim,” that morning, I mentioned I had thought I might have to Uber in. Jim’s reply was, “If my car didn’t start, that would be an instant sick call.” Calling in sick hadn’t occurred to me as an option, because I wasn’t sick.
I took the car to a different mechanic, who said the starter needed to be replaced. Unfortunately, they couldn’t have it fixed until the next afternoon because they needed to order a part. They recommended leaving the car there because if the starter totally gave out, I’d be stranded somewhere. So I Ubered home and contemplated calling in sick for the next morning.
If I had called out, my shift would have been covered with overtime. There’s a list of people for every shift who are willing to come in for overtime and lots of us take all the overtime we can get. If I had called out sick 35 minutes prior to my shift when my car didn’t start, the person I relieve would probably have had to stay an hour late, but somebody would have picked up the shift last-minute to start ASAP. If I called out in the afternoon when I found out the car needed to stay at the mechanic overnight, my shift the next morning would have been covered immediately with no schedule disruption to the person I’d been scheduled to relieve.
I’m in a union and our contract says the company can’t ask for a sick note unless you’re out for more than three days in a row. We don’t get “personal days” or any kind of leave that could officially be used for car trouble, only sick time. Additionally, I make about $550 dollars a day and Ubering would probably have been $50-100 round trip, so I’d still be ahead. I don’t have a partner or family nearby, so I couldn’t ask anybody to borrow their car or for them to drive me either.
I ended up emailing my workgroup to see if anyone would trade the shift with me, and somebody took me up on my offer. Trading shifts is very common at my workplace, and I figured I would Uber in if nobody was available for a last-minute trade. The “danger” of trying to trade last-minute is that once you email the workgroup to ask for the day off, the company can see you were trying to get that day off, so if you then call out sick it looks suspicious.
I think it should be okay to use sick days for car trouble, but in a lot of offices it wouldn’t be. In some offices, it would! The idea would be that sick days are functioning as a proxy for “last-minute emergency that means I can’t make it in, for health reasons or otherwise.” But other offices, and other managers, are sticklers about keeping sick days for sickness only. So you have to know your own office and your own manager.
When you’re unsure, it’s generally better to err on the side of caution and be “sick” (although I take your point that it risks looking suspicious if you were already seen trying to find coverage — although perhaps in that case you are already feeling sick the day before).
3. My boss is upset I didn’t tell him I was applying for another job internally
I recently applied for an internal position at my company. It would be a lateral move to a different team that works indirectly with my current team. The application directions for internal candidates stated that if offered an interview, you must notify your direct line manager.
Well, I was offered an interview. I immediately informed my manager that I had applied and was being offered an interview (even though I’d really rather not tell anyone at that stage). He seemed supportive at the time and admitted that I was well-qualified for the role.
Fast forward a couple months. I have not been offered the job and assume it has since been filled, which is fine. However, in an unrelated meeting with my manager today, he brought up my application and expressed that he was upset that I hadn’t told him before I applied. He seems to feel that it was unprofessional and disrespectful to apply without telling him until I was offered the interview.
My feeling is that internal or not, job searches are confidential and quite frankly, none of anyone’s business until it needs to be their business. Despite this, I still followed the company guidelines and notified him. If I had applied and not even been offered an interview, he would not have known and it wouldn’t have made a difference in the end.
I understand why he feels like this was deceitful and done behind his back, but from my point of view as a private person, I only like to share information when it’s relevant, and simply applying for an internal job is not relevant to my position on his team if it’s not going to advance beyond an application. I need a reality check here: are his expectations realistic, or an overreach of authority?
It’s not deceitful not to tip off your manager that you’re applying for another job! It’s normal; there’s no point in potentially causing alarm if you’re not going to actually make the move.
That said, it is a little different when the job is an internal one. It’s not uncommon for companies to have policies requiring you to tell your manager at some point (or even get their sign-off); some require it upon application, some at the interview stage, and some only if you move forward from there. Even if the policy doesn’t require you to disclose until later in the process, your manager may find out anyway; managers sometimes talk to each other, and it can get mentioned unless you specifically ask for it not to be.
In any case, your boss is being ridiculous. You followed your company’s policy on when to alert him, and he wasn’t entitled to earlier notice than that. You weren’t unprofessional or disrespectful to apply without alerting him. However, if he’s the type to hold it against you (or to start treating you as if you have one foot out the door), the smartest thing might be to assure him you’re not actively looking but were just interested in this particular job because ___.
4. Interviewers want me to talk about influencing without authority
I’m on the job hunt, and I’ve been asked a few times, “Tell me about a time when you influenced without authority.” I know the meaning of all those words, but I don’t really understand what I’m being asked. When I search for explanations, it’s all things that just sound like … working together? Could you share examples of good answers for this question?
They’re asking for examples of times when you got something done that involved other people even though you didn’t have formal authority over them. That could be a project you were in charge of where you needed to rely on other people to do work when you weren’t in their chain of command, or where you raised a concern or idea or proposed a new system and were able to convince people to see things your way, or when you helped contribute to a culture change — basically any time where you weren’t the boss but other people did something or changed their thinking or approach because of you.
5. How can I ask to work from another state for a few weeks?
My partner lives out of state in California and I live in South Carolina. I wanted to go out to California and stay with my boyfriend for about two weeks while continuing to work (I work remotely). How should I phrase my question to my boss asking if there’s a chance for me to continue to work while I’m out there visiting?
The first thing to know is that technically you’ll owe income taxes to California for those two weeks, and your company would have to report the income to the state. (This is more common than people realize; a lot of states have very low thresholds for how many days you can work there before you’re taxed on the income as a non-resident.) That said, it’s also true that people ignore this requirement all the time (to the point that your boss may not even know about it and your company might not bother to follow it) … but you should be aware that it could come up so that you’re not blindsided by it.
Aside from that, you could simply say, “Since I’m already working remotely, any objection to me working from California for two weeks while I’m visiting my partner next month (or family, or however you want to say it)? I’d keep the same hours and availability that I have now and wouldn’t have any change in my output; I’d just be working from a different chair than the one I’m normally in.”
Lots of managers will say yes to this. Some will say no — which could be because of information security (particularly in fields with strong data protection policies), or because they think you’ll treat it as a vacation and not work as much, or because they’re aware of the tax hassle. But it’s reasonable to ask.
Related:
when I work from home, do I have to be AT home?
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