It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. Customer Jokes That I’m Incompetent
At my job I deal with the general public, and I have a particular customer who is normally very playful and “joke-y.” Recently, he’s started making a new “joke” that every time I can’t make an exception for him — or get whatever he wants done — he’ll move on to asking my boss while saying something along the lines of, “Well, let’s see if we can get someone who actually knows how to do their job on it.”
Needless to say, I’m not a fan of this joke, no matter how much he laughs while saying it. I especially didn’t care for how the last time he said it, it was right in front of my district manager. My manager is very buddy-buddy with him and his opinion on this is, “From his perspective, you are bad at your job because you can’t make manager exceptions!” And, “You are not allowed to refuse service to specific customers.”
Unfortunately, this customer is absolutely the sensitive type who would get very offended being told to please not joke about something, so I have no idea what to say to him about this. Any advice so I don’t get the cancelled comedian spiel every time I see him?
It’s just part of dealing with the public that you have to field some cheesy, not-very-funny jokes. As long as the joke isn’t sexist, sexual, racist, or otherwise in a clearly not-okay category, you just have to internally roll your eyes, consider the guy a boor, and try to let it bounce off of you. It’ll probably be easier to do that if you can remember that this guy isn’t actually opining on your competence; he just has a shitty sense of humor. It sucks for him and for the people who aren’t paid to spend time around him, but for you he’s just a customer who you’re paid to be polite to.
2. Work Meeting in a Bar
I just got invited to a work meeting in a bar. The invitation describes it as part social event, part kickoff meeting for a new project that I’m a small part of. I can think of several reasons this isn’t a great workplace practice, a few of which apply to me — the really critical one in my case is that I can’t hear in noisy settings, which functionally shuts me out of the meeting even if I go. What’s the script in this situation?
“I like the intent of doing it somewhere more casual, but I can’t hear in noisy settings, which would shut me out of the meeting. Could we hold it somewhere quieter?”
Be matter-of-fact about it. This is a very reasonable thing to say, but it’s also something people won’t necessarily know unless you tell them. Decent coworkers would want to be told.
3. My Struggling Coworker Got Hired to Do the Same Kind of Work Again
Earlier this year, my company shut down and my entire team was laid off. One of my coworkers, “Junior,” had been transferred onto our team about a year before I joined. Junior was a genuinely nice person who wanted to work hard. He cared about our industry, understood our audience, and often had good ideas. But he struggled with prioritization, following instructions, basic concepts, communicating about his work, and getting work across the finish line without significant help.
I don’t think he was completely unaware that he was struggling. His anxiety increased as the year went on, and at one point he asked me if our manager was mad at him. But even when problems were explained repeatedly, he seemed unable to understand why they were happening or how to fix them.
For much of the year, our manager and I disagreed about how to handle him. I came from a workplace with a very low tolerance for sustained poor performance and thought we were letting the situation continue far too long. She was much more patient and coaching-oriented, which made me wonder whether I was simply being too harsh. Eventually, though, we converged. She was preparing to put him on a formal performance plan and significantly change his responsibilities. Then the company shut down.
I recently learned that Junior has now been hired by another company to do the same kind of work. I’m genuinely happy for him. I like him, I know how much this industry means to him, and I hope the new environment is a better fit. But another part of me keeps thinking: how? He spent years accumulating experience in work he never really mastered, the company closed before his performance problems led anywhere, and now that same experience has helped him get another job doing similar work. From the outside, his career progression looks completely normal.
Does getting hired again tell me anything about whether my assessment of him was too harsh? Or is it simply common for someone’s resume and career trajectory to look much stronger than their actual performance did to the people working beside them?
It’s common for people’s resumes and career trajectories to look much stronger than their actual work is. Much of that is due to people like your manager, who let the situation drag on far too long and didn’t actually manage Junior. Some of it is due to weak interviewers, who don’t probe deeply enough into candidates’ actual skills and achievements — including things like exactly what role they played on specific projects and how much help they had.
So no, his getting hired again doesn’t tell you anything about how accurate your assessment of his work was. If he goes on to have really impressive achievements, then maybe — but even then, you’d need to look beneath the surface to see how much of that was really Junior versus people on his team propping him up. Generally, trust what you saw as an accurate depiction of his abilities at the time you were working with him.
4. How Can I Ask for a Phone Call Instead of an Email?
I am finding that more and more businesses and government agencies are intentionally making it harder to talk with someone on the phone. This is especially true for local and regional governments in my area — if you call them, the call goes straight to voicemail every time and no one regularly picks up the phone in live time. Often, their outgoing message suggests sending an email or leaving an email address so that they can respond. But my requests aren’t usually something that can be easily handled via email. I need to talk with a live human being.
This came to a peak a few days ago when I left a voicemail message with a request for a callback. I left enough information so that the caller would be prepared when we talked, but I intentionally did not leave an email address. Rather than just calling me back, whoever picked up the voicemail went back into their system to find my email address and responded by email. This is something that could have been taken care of in 10 minutes if they’d just picked up the phone, but now we’re at 36+ hours with no resolution — the “solution” offered in the return email was not the solution to my problem.
Is there a polite way to say in a voicemail, “I need to talk to a live human being — please don’t send me into email hell?” I get that the wording might be different when calling a government agency versus a client.
You can try saying in your message, “This will be more easily resolved in a phone call and I may have follow-up questions, so please do not reply by email — I’m specifically requesting a return call.” And if they email you back anyway, you can reply to the email with, “I would strongly prefer a phone call so we can resolve this in one conversation rather than needing back and forth. Please call me at…” or “This is more complicated than can easily be handled via email, so I’m requesting a phone call at…“
5. My College Is Changing Its Name
My college, which I attended nearly 20 years ago, is changing its name from a simple if not distinctive name to a more complicated one — for example, from Middle Springfield College to Middle University Springfield. I now live in a different area of the country, so no one knows my school by name alone. My transcript of course reflects the name as it was when I attended.
Setting aside my personal feelings about the name change, what do I do about my resume? Is this like when companies change names, and do I just need to put the university formerly known as Middle Springfield College?
Write it this way:
Middle Springfield College (now known as Middle University Springfield)
