I’m on vacation. Here are some past letters that I’m making new again, rather than leaving them to wilt in the archives. And then later today, updates season begins!
1. My former tenant’s “manager” is requesting money for her time spent on a lease dispute
I have been in conflict with a former tenant (Sara) for a few weeks, for various reasons that I am not going to list here but are part of the usual conflicts tenants and landlords can have at the end of a tenancy (cleanliness, state of the garden, etc.). The usual legal process is taking place in order for me to be able to deduct costs I incurred, from her deposit. We are going through a simplified process because the claim is low (less than $1000) and no solicitors are involved.
Sara works for a well-known global company and I have just received an email from someone claiming to be her manager, asking me to pay the equivalent of one week of Sara’s salary for the time she had to take off work to deal with the conflict. The email address seems to be legitimate, using the company’s domain name and I can find the name of the person on LinkedIn as working there but they don’t seem to hold a senior position. The email is not clear as to whom the compensation should be paid and does not detail how the compensation was computed (one week seems a very long time to send a few emails — the process has taken me one hour so far).
Now, I have no problem answering to this person that I do not know who they are and that they need to follow a legal process if they want to claim anything from me. However, I know that such a big global company would never start a litigation like this (no solicitor involved, even in-house, unclear claim) so I suspect Sara to have organized it. And so here is my question: shall I contact the company to inform them of this claim made in their name?
My first idea was to wait to see if I receive a second email, as at the end of the day Sara is very young and I don’t want her to lose her job over this. Now I am not too sure. As a manager, I would want to know this. Apart from this email, I have never been in touch with Sara’s employer, I just saw salary statements before she moved in.
Wow, yeah, I suspect you’re right that this isn’t a genuine request from Sara’s company but instead came from a coworker at her request, for all the reasons you stated. And if I were Sara’s employer, I’d sure as hell want to know that she was doing this. (Although it’s possible that it’s actually Sara’s manager going rogue — it’s possible she has a manager without a particularly senior-sounding title and that person is out of their gourd, rather than it being something Sara herself organized. Who knows.)
In any case, you could certainly alert her employer if you want to, and there’s nothing wrong with doing that. But it’s likely to make things more contentious with Sara and it doesn’t really get you any closer to any of the outcomes you want (which presumably are just to handle the end of her lease with as little hassle as possible). Ultimately I’d get clarity on what you want here (just to settle the lease situation as quickly and easily as possible? to take a stand on principle that this email is messed up and there should be consequences?) and proceed accordingly.
– 2018
Read an update to this letter here.
2. My office window looks right into the apartment of an enthusiastic nudist
My colleagues and I decided to reach out to you with a problem that’s recently developed. Our office is on the seventh floor of a downtown building. Two streets away is a recently completed apartment complex with a penthouse level with two apartments with floor to ceiling windows. One apartment keeps the shades down. The other always has them fully up. The resident routinely walks around during office hours naked or in a bra and underwear. Today she walked out on her balcony undressed.
The apartment is exactly in our line of sight (particularly in my office), and it’s impossible not to notice. This may seem funny or titillating to some, but we find this very distracting and unwelcome. What is the best course of action? Email the management company? Stop by the lobby and say something to the front desk person? Maybe she doesn’t realize just how visible she is.
Well … it’s really up to her what she does in her own apartment. In some jurisdictions the balcony piece of this would violate public decency laws, although it sounds like that may have been a one-time occurrence. If this is mainly about her being in underwear or naked in her own home, that’s not really something you can or should interfere with. It’s more just a reality of city living; people are crammed together and you’re going to see things.
But I certainly understand why it’s distracting when you’re at work! I’d instead look into measures you can take on your own side, like curtains (gauzy ones would let you still have sunlight but would probably make her less noticeable) or changing the angle of your desk.
At the very most, if you can figure out how to get a note directly to her, you could leave a note saying that she may not realize she’s so visible to people across the way — but you don’t really have standing to insist she put on more clothes in her own home.
– 2019
3. I got sent to a conference where I didn’t belong
I was recently sent to an important conference on behalf of my organization, as some higher-ups were unavailable. When I arrived, it became immediately apparent that the conference was more of an intimate meeting of some very important players in my industry. I had been planning on spending a couple of days listening to talks and taking notes. Instead I found myself in discussions where I really had nothing to contribute.
The whole thing was embarrassing. It was obvious to everyone there that I shouldn’t have been sent. I decided to brush the entire experience off and try and learn as much as I could. However, in the next meeting they discussed future conferences and one of the members made a comment, prefaced with “no offense,” that for future meetings it should be made clear what level of employee was required to attend, and if that level employee was not available, “they shouldn’t just send anyone.”
It was very embarrassing and upsetting to be singled out. I wasn’t under any illusions about how out of place I was, but I do know that my attendance was confirmed ahead of time with the conference leaders.
How do I give feedback to my manager about this conference? I want to make it clear that in future it wouldn’t be appropriate to send an employee of my level (my manager is new and wouldn’t have known, this only became clear upon arrival) as I wouldn’t want anyone to experience this, but I also don’t want to appear ungrateful as it was supposed to be a wonderful opportunity. I also don’t know whether to mention this comment that rattled me. Thoughts?
“It turned out the conference was really for high-level players — people there were typically CEOs and second-in-commands (or whatever — describe the roles of the people there). I figured I’d try to learn as much as I could while I was there, but during a planning meeting they made it pretty clear that they didn’t want anyone to send someone at my level again. Obviously neither of us knew this before I went, but I wanted to fill you in for next year.”
I think you can just keep it factual like that and there’s no need to get into the fact that you felt embarrassed and rattled, unless your manager seems to really want to dissect what happened. If she does, you can be straightforward about the the whole thing. But otherwise, I’d keep it just to the parts that are relevant for next time.
By the way, since the conference leaders knew you were attending, it’s possible that the person who made the remark about “not sending just anyone” was an outlier and other people didn’t feel that way. But it also sounds like you basically agreed with that assessment, and it was just the snotty phrasing that bothered you. I’d try to separate your emotions from it as much as possible and see it as just an inartful expression of what you already knew. It makes total sense that it was embarrassing to have that said right in front of you, though! (But I promise you that in a few years, “the time I got sent to a conference where I was completely out of place” will be an amusing story you can tell other people.)
– 2019
4. Applicant made weird demands for interview timeline
In a recent period of hiring I came across plenty of slightly strange (and some more than slightly strange) things that applicants felt the need to include in their resumes or cover letters. None confused me more than the below, which to me reads more like a logic puzzle than a statement of availability. For context, this was at the very bottom of a four-page resume under the heading “Availability for Interview”:
“I would be available for an interview only within a period of let’s say four days and preferably sooner, from the time of receiving the formal shortlisting email notice. This also means that I would not be available for the interview in case the email notice is sent to me earlier than four days prior to the interview date. The time periods include also weekends.”
I just have so many questions! It seems like the applicant wants as short a time as possible to elapse between being shortlisted and being interviewed, but I’m at a loss as to why. And why is four days the magic number? Am I missing something?
Even if it were more of a straightforward statement, I would find such a thing rather presumptuous on a resume. Maybe in a cover letter if your availability will be unusually limited in the weeks following applying for a job, but in a resume like it’s a blanket requirement of yours regardless of the timing of the application? It just seems off, or maybe that is overly rigid of me?
Noooo, this is quite weird. You are not being overly rigid.
I also like that he himself is very rigid but then says “let’s say four days,” as if he’s just thinking up the number on the spot.
He is weirdly demanding and out of touch with the norms of humans, and you should reject him (but only within a period of let’s say four days and preferably sooner).
– 2018
