employer wants us to “volunteer” for groundskeeping, snubbed by a mentee, and more (2024)

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. My employer wants us to “volunteer” for groundskeeping and cleaning

I work in a faculty position at a private university that is struggling with all the challenges that higher education is facing right now, including declining enrollment. We have not had raises in years, and positions are only replaced if they are determined to be absolutely necessary. Even though housekeeping and groundskeeping are deemed necessary, they are having trouble filling those positions because they either can’t or won’t pay a competitive wage for the area.

Recently the administration sent out an email asking all employees to participate in a voluntary workday to make the campus beautiful before students arrive. Staff who would be working that day can count it toward time worked, but faculty, who would typically not be working that day, are expected to do it with no additional compensation. Tasks include power washing buildings, planting flowers and laying mulch, and cleaning. I had planned to use that day to prepare for my fall semester classes. Part of the reason they are asking for help is because they don’t have an adequate number of groundskeeping and housekeeping staff, although the email didn’t say that. I do not think it is my responsibility to do tasks outside of what I was hired to do because the university failed to hire people to do them.

I’m planning to not sign up for a time slot, but do you think this is something that we should push back on? Also, do you think that those who don’t participate could face backlash for failing to be a team player?

Yes, it’s something you should push back on. It’s bad enough that you’re being asked to pick up extra work from unfilled jobs similar to your own (for no additional compensation), but now you’re supposed to “volunteer” for manual labor that has nothing to do with your job at all? No. If they want to cut positions, they need to deal with the consequences of cutting those positions — not add power washing and cleaning onto your already full plates so that you’re the ones shouldering those consequences.

Will you face backlash for “not being a team player”? Maybe! But the more of you who decline to sign up, the less feasible that will be — so encourage your colleagues to sit this out.

2. People ask if my hair color is natural

I’m a woman in my late thirties and I work for a company of approximately 600 people. My role has me connecting with people across many departments. I have found my hair to be a frequent topic of conversation at work and I’m looking for a script to politely shut people down.

My hair was dark blond most of my life, but I started going gray early. I think gray hair looks lovely on many people, but it made me look washed out and ill so I had fun trying out lots of different hair colors. For the last five-ish years, I’ve dyed my hair red (Cowboy Copper, to be precise). It’s bright, but not outside the realm of natural hair colors.

My problem is that I get asked approximately once a week if my hair color is natural. I think it’s rude and would never ask someone whether they dye their hair. I’ve tried different answers — a joke, the truth, lying and saying it’s natural, and they always respond with compliments, but every exchange leaves me uncomfortable. I don’t think the people asking mean to be rude (they all legitimately seem to like the color) but I never know how to respond. How do I politely shut these people down?

Yes, it’s rude. Welcome to life as a redhead! People constantly ask redheads if our hair is real. A friend’s mom once poked around in my hair looking for roots because she didn’t believe it was real. I’m pretty sure adults asked me if it was real when I was a child.

That said, most people who ask are just interested because it’s unusual. You certainly don’t need to tell them it’s dyed if you don’t want to, but it’s also not a shameful secret and you could simply respond, “No, I just like it.” But if you don’t want to answer on principle, some options for you:

* “Why do you ask?”
* “I don’t think you’re supposed to ask people that.”
* “That’s between me and my hairdresser.”

Still, “No, I just like it” is likely to make it less of a big deal.

3. I was snubbed by a mentee I’ve given countless hours of my time to

I am a seasoned professional in a niche spot in my field. Early on in my career, I spent some time talking to my alma mater classes about my niche area of work, and took to mentoring a student who was interested in my field.

I have spent hours over nearly a decade giving advice to this person, editing his resume, and providing extraordinary amounts of input for which positions would be a good fit.

Recently I had a question for this mentee. He had accepted a job at an agency I cross paths with very infrequently, and I thought he could provide me very general information on a topic. Instead, he immediately discussed billing my agency for work over 30 minutes, and even mentioned an unwarranted inspection of my facility. I was floored. I told him to forget about it, reached out to a consultant, and worked out the question on my own.

I do not plan to give my time to this person ever again. Should I tell him how disrespectful he was, and why I plan to separate myself from his future advice needs? He contacts me only when he needs career advice. He has stolen countless hours from me and gave nothing as a show of thanks.

Nah, there’s no point. You’re right to be unavailable to him in the future now that he’s shown his interest in the relationship is so one-sided, but there’s little to be gained by spelling it out for him. (And really, you’ve already invested a ton of time in coaching him! You don’t need to do this final bit of it on your way out the door.)

For what it’s worth, though, I don’t think it’s useful to look at this as him stealing your time. You presumably mentored him voluntarily. And sure, you assumed the relationship would be a two-way one, but he didn’t engage with you under false pretenses. He’s just selfish and apparently sucks at networking. Now you know!

4. How do I reject a qualified former coworker?

I am the senior director for a small firm. We are in the process of hiring a new lead engineer in a very niche field where the applicant pool is tiny in our region. We recently received an outstanding resume from somebody with 30+ years of experience, a master’s in our field, and a ton of awesome project work that lines up with exactly what we need. Great news; our months’ long search is over! Only one catch: this person used to be my boss, left on overall good terms with our organization, but also left a bad taste in the mouths of a number of current team members. He resigned 10 years ago to take a high level director position at a neighboring company.

The word is that he left his director role in an acrimonious fashion last year (forced resignation). He is currently at another company as a chief engineer, which is two steps below director but two steps above our position. Our location would save him almost an hour commuting each day and I am guessing that is at least part of why he wants to come back. But beyond the personnel issues if he were to return (people are already freaking out about the possibility), the position he applied for requires a lot of desk time and actual crunching numbers type of engineering work, with no supervisory requirements. My experience with him as my boss was that he was a super delegator — to the point of asking senior engineers to draft emails on his behalf to send to vendors, prepare his presentations for conferences, do the annual cap ex budget for him (!), etc.

We have a handful of junior engineers and my gut is telling me he will pass his work on to them even though they don’t report to the senior engineer. He also has 15 years more experience than the manager he would report to — they have very different management styles and I believe he would question/go around him constantly. HR is trying to do everything by the book and although I have relayed all of this to them, they are insisting, based on his qualifications, that we have to offer him an interview. He will ace the interview and I am sure he will outshine the other candidates we have (he’s a very good politician and is very sharp). Is there anything else I can do to convince HR to not bring him in for the interview? Or if we must interview him, how can we justifiably turn him down? I also want to maintain a professional relationship with him, as we still occasionally cross paths at industry events.

First of all, what exactly does “the senior director” mean here? If you’re in charge of the firm, HR should be working to support you, not laying down edicts that they can’t defend. Yes, they’re charged with ensuring the company complies with the law and minimizes risk, but there’s no legal requirement that you interview everyone who’s qualified on paper. If you’ve worked with the candidate in the past and know they’re wrong for the role based on that experience, you do not need to interview out of a sense of fairness. So first, push back on HR and ask them to explain exactly why they think you should ignore firsthand experience working closely with a candidate.

Second, are you in charge of hiring for this position? If so, and you’re pushed into interviewing him, you can name your concern pretty explicitly in the interview: “This is an individual contributor position that doesn’t manage anyone, and about 80% of your time will be spent doing XYZ personally, not supervising others in doing it. I know that’s different than the role you had when we worked together, so I hoped you would speak to your interest in making that kind of move and what appeals to you about it.” Who knows, maybe you’ll hear something that changes your mind. But assuming you don’t, you can simply decline to hire him based on your experience working together in the past and your knowledge of the needs of the role. And if you’re not the decision-maker, you should share your experience and concerns very candidly with whoever is.

5. Can you take back your resignation?

This is a hypothetical, but it’s made me curious: Is there any way to pull back a resignation within the notice period? I had a wild dream where I quit a job I liked a lot for a reason I regretted, and found myself having to try to un-quit. I didn’t actually do this, but now I can’t stop thinking about it! Is there a script for changing your mind gracefully?

Sure, you can always try. If they valued you and haven’t already hired someone else, they might leap at the chance to keep you — although on the manager side of that, I’d want to make sure I understood what led you to quit in the first place and why you’d changed your mind, and I’d want to feel confident that whatever led to your quitting wasn’t going to put us in the same spot a few months down the road. And of course, if they weren’t terribly sad about you leaving, you might hear, “We appreciate the offer, but we’ve already planned for the transition and are pretty far into hiring for your replacement.”

As for how to say it, you need to explain why you’ve changed your mind. For example: “I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and I’d be interested in staying if it’s not too late to change course. I’d been concerned that my job was moving to more of an X focus, but you were so responsive when we talked about it and I can see that with Jane joining our team, those projects won’t fall as heavily to my role for much longer. If you’re open to me staying, I’m looking at a lot of this differently now.” (But that’s a reason that makes sense! If it’s just “oops, I acted too hastily / in the heat of the moment,” you still might be able to reverse it, but you should expect a fair amount of concern about what happened and whether you can really be happy there or not.)

Related:
employee resigned but now wants to stay