It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go…
1. My boss hates that I blush a lot
I have always been a chronic blusher. Whatever you’re thinking when you read that, it’s way more. I blush at everything. Someone looks at me — I turn red. I think about something slightly awkward that happened to me — I blush. As a teen, my parents even took me to doctors for it. It turns out I have a condition called idiopathic craniofacial erythema, which is basically a fancy name for saying my blush reaction is crazy over-primed. I tried CBT. I tried regular talk therapy. I even tried medication. No go. There is a surgery option but it’s scary and I’m not interested in doing it.
When I realized this is never going to change, I changed course and decided not to let it stop me. I’d always wanted to be more outgoing but the awkward feeling of knowing I was going to keep blushing made me stop myself. But I decided not to let it stop me anymore from doing what I want to do, and I started approaching people, striking up conversations, asking strangers for directions — all the sort of regular things I’d always held back from. People who know me now say I have a lot of social grace and I’m a pleasant, fun, outgoing person, even though I still turn beet red at the drop of a hat.
Where this meets work: I have a wonderful job that I love. The issue is that it’s client-facing, and about a year ago I got a new manager, Marie. From the beginning Marie took issue with my blushing. She could never get comfortable around me, I guess because she thought my blushing when she spoke to me meant I wasn’t comfortable with her? Coworkers have told me several times that she’s complained aloud about “how we let someone so shy have such a high-level client-facing position” and how the clients must be so uncomfortable. I am not shy. I do my job well, and I’ve gotten great feedback from my clients, even if it took some of them a bit of time to get comfortable with me in the beginning. My strategy has always been to act as if the blushing is not happening, and most people take that cue from me after a short while. My friends have told me that after getting to know me they no longer notice that I blush so much.
Marie has recently escalated her complaints and has started bringing them directly to me, almost every day. She’s told me that as a customer-facing employee I need to work on my presentation and interpersonal skills, and kept reiterating that she’s not happy with the way I present myself. I’ve asked my colleagues and they all agree I’m very good at what I do and the clients are very happy with me, and that’s the feedback I’ve gotten from clients too.
What can I do? I’m worried Marie is going to try let me go. She recently gave me a very poor performance review, even though I hit all my work goals and even surpassed many of them, and she’s started speaking about a PIP. Is this ADA-level stuff? I’ve never sought accommodations from HR because this diagnosis is a bit iffy — many doctors claim there’s no such condition and it’s misdiagnosed anxiety (which I, of course, think is nonsense). We don’t have great HR, but I’ve never had to defend myself at work this way before.
Talk to HR ASAP and explain what’s going on. Make sure to include everything Marie is doing — hassling you about it near daily, giving you a poor evaluation despite your performance and now talking about a PIP, and complaining to colleagues about you.
Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, this probably doesn’t qualify as a protected disability, but (a) some states have laws that go beyond the ADA and (b) most employers still don’t want managers discriminating against good employees based on a minor medical condition that doesn’t impact their work, regardless of whether it’s ADA-level. (Also, if your manager regards you as having a disability, like anxiety, you’d actually be covered — because the law protects people perceived as having disabilities too.)
When you talk to HR, use the wording, “I am concerned I’m being penalized for a medical condition and that my job may be at risk, despite my work results.”
2. I messed up a major project at the end of my internship
I was a student intern at a local media organization, and my term ended a few months ago. I was very lucky to have this position, and my coworkers were incredibly kind and gave me a lovely farewell.
Here is my issue: I had a deadline for a project I was working on for a couple months, and I submitted it on my very last day of work. I fumbled in the most massively horrifying way when I uploaded the materials to our shared cloud database and deleted them off my personal device as they took up a lot of space. Big mistake: the files I submitted did not get fully uploaded and could not be recovered, and I’ve since been in a scramble to redo them with only the raw footage left (some of which was also deleted). This is an objectively easy but somewhat labor intensive task, made worse by the fact that I myself got very sick for almost the entire month after my position ended, and as soon as I recovered, I had to relocate to take care of a sick family member.
My supervisor has since reached out to me a few times about the state of the work, and I gave a brief explanation and assured her I would be able to get it done, but I keep dropping the ball. In the last few months my region has experienced severe weather that caused extensive damage to my house, and my family member has had a major health crisis. I am only now in a position where I can get this done — nearly six months after it was initially due and only a few weeks before it needs to be shared. At this point, my supervisor could have very well gotten someone else to do it, I wouldn’t know because I’ve been to scared to reach out!
I will be uploading the completed materials by the end of the week, but I owe my supervisor an apology for my very poor communication and the egregious delay. I have already apologized a couple times, but it doesn’t really mean much if I continued to miss the deadlines I set for myself. How do I explain the situation and my appreciation for my supervisor’s patience without making it sound like a string of excuses? It’s been an awful few months and I’m really hoping to put this behind me without entirely ruining my professional reputation.
Oh no, I’m sorry — this is a perfect storm of problems that were largely out of your control. The original upload mistake was yours, yes, but everything that happened after that to compound it wasn’t.
All you can do is to apologize and explain what happened. For example: “I want to reiterate how terribly sorry I am about this. I should have confirmed that the original upload had gone through before removing the files from my device. Normally I would have been able to fix that fairly quickly, but I’ve had a string of difficult external events since then (a lengthy illness, a seriously ill family member, a relocation, and then severe housing damage from the hurricane). I say that not to excuse the delay, but to explain the context. I really valued my internship and everyone I worked with, and I’m mortified to have had this happen.”
That’s all you can do! If they knew you to be a reasonably conscientious person during your internship, this should do a lot to take responsibility and put it in context.
For what it’s worth, I’m not thrilled about them expecting all of this additional — presumably unpaid — work from you after your internship ended. I completely get why you’re doing it — you don’t want to leave them with a bad impression after the work you put in — and on their end they may not realize how much they’re asking of you (especially if they think the files are easily reconstructed) … but I also don’t want you to go forward thinking it’s normal to have to fix mistakes after you’re no longer at a job. This was an unusual situation, made worse in ways that normally won’t happen.
3. I was told the salary range was flexible, but apparently it’s not
I was contacted to apply for a position at a company where I have many pre-existing contacts. The person who would be my boss set up an informal conversation about the role, during which we discussed the listed starting salary; I was told it was flexible. I asked how flexible, and was honest that it would be a significant pay cut — and was given the full salary range. I conveyed that my current salary is near the top of their range, and I would not be interested in taking a pay cut. I was again assured flexibility.
With that information, I decided to apply, and was ultimately made a verbal offer by the same person. They said HR would look at the job description, my qualifications, and the salary range and make a formal offer. To my surprise, I was offered exactly the starting salary, despite having significantly more experience than the minimum qualifications and despite the previous conversation.
When I met with HR to negotiate, they seemed surprised, confused, and maybe a little annoyed. They said everyone in this tier of positions starts at this salary, and what I was asking for was much more than everyone else made and it wouldn’t be fair. They said they’d try to get a little higher and would consult with the CEO, but I haven’t heard anything since.
I’m feeling a mix of irritation, disappointment, and self-consciousness. I’ve never negotiated before and feel like I flubbed it. I get the feeling HR thinks I pulled one over on them, but had I known this wasn’t a “starting” salary, but rather the salary, I’d have never applied and wasted my own time, let alone theirs. What did I do wrong here? And, how can I mend my reputation with my contacts at this company?
It’s not you who needs to mend your reputation with them, it’s them with you. They invited you to apply for a job under apparently false pretenses and wasted your time. That probably wasn’t intentional; it sounds like a miscommunication or misunderstanding between the hiring manager and HR, but it’s still what happened.
Get in touch with the manager who you originally talked with about salary and explain what happened: “As you know, we had talked about salary early on and I’d explained that I’d need to be offered near the top of the range since I can’t take a pay cut. HR offered me the very bottom of the range and seemed surprised that I had expected anything else. Is this something you’re able to intervene on? I can’t accept the salary being offered, and I wouldn’t have applied without our conversation about it initially.”
It’s possible the hiring manager can intervene and get this changed; it’s also possible that they can’t. But this is the right next move, both in the negotiation itself / to figure out if this job is still a real possibility for you or not, and in terms of making sure they’re clear on what happened.
But you didn’t mess up. They did.
4. Could questions about low-performers be explained by the person working a second job?
As an avid AAM reader for many years, I’ve wondered in the last two years if some of the questions about managing remote staff who are not making deadlines, under-responsive, or not keeping their cameras on during meetings are really about staff who are holding down multiple full-time jobs. Do you ever consider in your responses that the underperforming employee might actually be “over-employed” and that’s the reason for the performance issues and subterfuge?
The beauty of those situations is that it doesn’t really matter, because the answer for the manager is still the same: lay out clear the expectations the person isn’t meeting and what needs to change, and then hold them to that. If someone isn’t meeting deadlines or isn’t responsive enough, regardless of the cause, their manager needs to address those things forthrightly, and with a relatively short timeline for improvement. More here:
is there a way to find out if someone secretly has two full-time jobs?
Good managers should always be keeping an eye out for problems, giving feedback, and being direct about problems. In a lot of these “is this employee working a second full-time job?” cases, the root of the issue is that the manager isn’t paying enough attention or is being too passive.
