It&#;s five answers to five questions. Here we go&#;
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1. Is it ageist not to expect more from a near-retirement employee?
I&#;m a 34-year-old manager with eight years of people management experience. I manage an age-diverse team at a tech company. One employee, Darcy, is in her 60s and has shared that she&#;s a couple years from retirement. Darcy is good at her job, but she&#;s not excellent. After several years of attempting to coach her and increase her skills, with limited impact, I&#;ve concluded that she&#;ll never be great. I&#;ve come to terms with this. I don&#;t believe I need a whole team of superstars as long as each person brings sufficient value to the team.
But her colleague, my top superstar, has recently expressed (to me) resentment that Darcy isn&#;t amazing &#; makes some repeated mistakes, needs some micromanaging. Am I unfairly &#;giving up&#; on improving Darcy&#;s performance based on her age, retirement plans, and my learned experience of seeing limited growth from coaching sessions? It&#;s worth noting that I&#;ve promoted this colleague in the past and plan to do so again, whereas Darcy has not earned any promotions.
If Darcy&#;s performance were exactly the same but she was 40 and you happened to know she planned to leave the company in two years (for any reason &#; grad school, spouse in the military, who knows what), would you be handling her any differently? If not, then you&#;re not being ageist. You&#;re choosing not to invest your limited development energies in someone who&#;s doing a good enough job &#; although not great &#; who you know won&#;t be around long-term. That&#;s a reasonable decision, as long as her work really is &#;good enough.&#; That&#;s crucial though &#; is her work good enough? Making repeated mistakes and needing some micromanaging makes me a little skeptical, although it&#;ll come down to the specifics of exactly what that looks like.
Another question to ask yourself: if Darcy&#;s plans change and she doesn&#;t retire in a couple of years, will you regret not handling things differently now? Two years could turn into three or four or even longer.
Also, what&#;s the impact on the rest of your team? If there&#;s an obvious difference in the standards they&#;re held to versus the ones Darcy is held to, or if her mistakes impact them, that&#;s bad for morale and it&#;s the type of thing you could lose people to. If that&#;s the case, you can&#;t categorize her work as &#;good enough&#; and you&#;d need to address the problems more proactively. (In particular, look rigorously at your superstar&#;s complaints. Is the issue really that Darcy isn&#;t &#;amazing&#; or is it that she&#;s not even good?)
2. Employee&#;s speakerphone disrupts everyone around her
I&#;m a children&#;s librarian in a major city. Our city has a few large &#;hub&#; libraries and many smaller neighborhood branches. I work at one of the small branches. My supervisor, the branch&#;s head librarian, and I are stumped on an issue we&#;re having with our housekeeper.
&#;Patsy&#; comes in at 2 pm and stays until after closing hours to clean. I&#;ve never met such a loud person in my life. I don&#;t mind people chatting and enjoying the library, but Patsy makes so much noise that we can barely get our work done. As soon as Patsy comes in, she puts her on speaker and proceeds to have a seemingly unending conversation. On the rare occasion that she isn&#;t talking to someone, she puts on TV shows or loud music, again on speaker, and blasts them loudly enough to be heard throughout the library.
It&#;s and I&#;m not an old-school shusher sort of librarian, but her noise makes it difficult for us to do any programming. Her speaker conversations blast over story time and her tv shows are a distraction when we have club meetings. Forget about people trying to study or read quietly. My supervisor has spoken to her multiple times and in the moment, she&#;ll put her away, but the next day it comes back. She seems genuinely confused when we ask her to be quieter.
When we realized that we weren&#;t getting through to her, we bought her some ear pods. My supervisor gave them to her for Christmas and showed her how to use them. She used them for three days and then we never saw them again and it was back to the noise.
Patsy is contracted through the city and I really don&#;t want to complain about her to them. I believe she works multiple jobs and this is the only one that offers insurance. How do we get her to stop blasting her nonstop without getting her into trouble?
Is your sense that she&#;s literally not retaining the information from one day to the next (presumably because of something medical) or that she&#;s not taking the requests seriously? If she&#;s not retaining the request from day to day, then the solution might be that someone needs to remind her every day; that&#;s part of the package of working with Patsy. But otherwise, or if you&#;re not sure, then has anyone been explicit with her that this is a blanket rule for always and not just an in-the-moment request? I know that sounds obvious, but managers often aren&#;t as explicit as they need to be (usually because they assume the employee should be able to read between the lines or has enough of the playbook that they don&#;t need everything spelled out) . So if it hasn&#;t happened yet, that conversation is: &#;While you are here, you cannot have your on speaker, ever. I need you to make it a permanent rule to never use speakerphone while you are here, not just today but every day.&#;
But if you&#;ve done that and it&#;s not working, and you don&#;t want to address it daily, the only remaining option is to talk with whoever manages her. It&#;s very unlikely that asking them to address it will get Patsy fired, particularly if you stress that that&#;s not the outcome you want. But at some point, if you want to solve the problem and none of the above works, that&#;s the avenue you&#;d need to take.
Read an update to this letter.
3. Is my preferred name too cringy to get interviews?
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So, I&#;m lgbtqia+, right? I felt that my birth name didn&#;t fit me, so I changed it, but now I&#;m worried I won&#;t get hired for a job since I put it in my resume that I go by my name. My (mostly) full name is Wolfskull Shadow Bones C.
I just want some opinions from people I don&#;t know. Tell me your opinion, and I will keep it in mind as I build my resume.
I am goth, so it is kinda on brand for me, but I also know that people who want to hire me might not know that. I also put in my resume that I am perfectly okay with not being called this, and being called by my legal middle name instead.
It will be an obstacle for a lot of employers. You might decide that you&#;d rather screen out employers who have a problem with it, but since you&#;re asking: yes, it&#;s likely to cut down on the number of interview invitations you receive, probably significantly unless you have a really in-demand skill set.
If you choose to keep using it, I recommending not using that note on your resume that says they don&#;t need to call you by that. That&#;s likely to confuse people, call attention to the name in an odd way, and make employers more likely to assume it&#;s not your &#;real&#; name (and therefore that it&#;s a joke or something strange that they don&#;t understand, which will make you someone they don&#;t understand, which isn&#;t great when you want people to want to hire you).
4. What do I owe a freelance client who abruptly ended my project?
I was recently informed that an ongoing freelance project I had was going to end, effective immediately &#; through a text sent to my initial contact by the team lead (who managed me directly). I had been working on-site and saw the person who made this decision every day. I feel deeply disrespected to have not even been extended the courtesy of a personal notification that the work was ending. The text does not note any issues with my performance, just a change in direction. I had been working without a contract or a formal agreement, which I know is not ideal. I&#;m currently waiting to receive payment for my last invoice.
What do I owe these people? The team lead seems to not have told anyone ahead of time that we would not continue to work together. I keep receiving emails asking for files, clarifications, etc. from my former coworkers. Maybe naively, my point of view is that the company should have secured these files from me ahead of time, or set up any sort of internal server that I had access to, or done &#; literally anything, especially given that they knew this was going to happen (and I didn&#;t). I understand that they own the work product, of course, but I&#;m not concerned about preserving the relationship or getting a reference, at this point.
Yeah, they should have had a real conversation with you; a call would have been fine, but not a text. But that doesn&#;t change your obligations: you still owe them a professional wrap-up, meaning sending all the project files, etc. in a way that makes sense. (Do this all at once, not piecemeal as people request things.) You should bill them for that wrap-up work, of course! You don&#;t do that for free. But that&#;s generally understood to be part of the work a freelancer agrees to when they take a project on (assuming, of course, that you weren&#;t told &#;do no billable work whatever from this moment on&#;). Once you do that, you can let anyone else who emails you know that your work on the project has wrapped up and you&#;ve sent all your files to Rupert or whoever.
You can wait until your last invoice is paid before you provide the final wrap-up stuff if you want (and then do one final invoice for the wrap-up work). And certainly if they come back and ask for additional work later, you can explain that you&#;re no longer available because you&#;ve filled your time with other clients &#; but you do need to do the professional wrap-up now.
5. Asking about health insurance coverage when interviewing
A couple years ago, I was diagnosed with a disability that will require notoriously expensive drugs for the rest of my life. Luckily, my insurance has covered the vast majority of my prescriptions and my deductible is relatively low for my routine doctor&#;s appointments.
Now that I&#;m at a great place with my health, I&#;m looking to move on from my current workplace, but I am nervous about getting new insurance. How do you gauge insurance quality when interviewing? I&#;m anxious about disclosing my disability to interview panelists, but I also want to make sure I&#;m taken care of medically. Is this something I ask during the interview? After I&#;ve received an offer? How can I make sure they&#;re not embellishing the quality of their benefits when my life depends on it?
The best thing is to wait until you have an offer and then say, &#;I have a chronic condition that&#;s under control but requires medication. Is it possible for me to check with your health insurance plan to ensure it&#;s covered?&#; Ideally you want to get the plan name and ID and call it directly to find out, so that (a) you&#;re getting the information firsthand and not relying on someone else to get it correct for you and (b) you&#;re not sharing private medical information with the employer. Obviously it would be better if you could raise this earlier in the process so that you don&#;t waste your or their time if the insurance won&#;t work for you, but waiting for the offer removes the risk that revealing medical info could bias them against you (even if only unconsciously) before they make a hiring decision.
But also, be aware that the company can change insurance plans in the future, and the insurance plan itself can change what drugs it covers.
Given how crucial health insurance is to people&#;s ability to survive and given that we&#;ve chosen to tie health insurance to employment, you&#;d think we would have a better system for this but &#; we don&#;t.
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