Happy Juneteenth! Here are some past letters revisited for the holiday.
1. Asking Junior Staff to Speak for Their Generation
Any suggestions for how to curb the need some of my colleagues have to use the “youth” in the room — be it younger staff or interns — to speak for all people of their demographic? This happened to me when I was an intern and I hated it since it felt reductive. Now that I’m further along in my career, I feel like I have a chance to make a change, but I’m not sure how to tackle it.
An example is when we’re discussing a social media campaign video as a group and a member of staff turns to the 20-something intern and asks, “What does YOUR generation think?” then laughs.
It’s pretty casual right now and limited to two particular members of the team, but still feels inappropriate. I want people to realize we respect everyone for their opinions and expertise, ones that do not rely on age or social status, and that one person’s thoughts on a matter do not scale up to represent an entire demographic. It’s infuriating and diminishes the person’s opinion to the year they were born, not their experience.
Yeah, that’s annoying — and treating an entire demographic as a monolithic block is rude. That said, it’s also pretty natural for people to see “youth culture” as something they no longer understand or relate to, and to be curious about what the young people they do know think. In other words, you may not be able to shut it down in every situation, but you can try.
One way to do it: the next time it happens, you could jump in and say, “I don’t think any of us can speak for our entire generation, but I’m interested in hearing Jane’s take as just herself.”
If someone is a repeat offender and you have the standing to speak to them privately, you could try something like: “I’m sure you didn’t mean anything by it, but when you ask our younger staffers to speak for their whole generation, it puts the focus on their age in a way we wouldn’t do with people who were older. It used to make me really uncomfortable when I was younger and people would do that. It’s great that we’re asking for their input, but I think they’d feel more respected if we didn’t tie it to their age.”
2. A Recently-Fired Employee Was Regularly Looking at a Coworker’s Burlesque Photos Online
We terminated an office employee this week who was always just kind of creepy and walked the line of inappropriateness with his jokes. He was fired for something else, not because of any complaints.
Today I went through his computer because a) we need a lot of files from it, b) he didn’t password protect it, and c) we need to know what websites he has work accounts for. But oh man, he didn’t log out of or delete his browser history. As I was looking through his Chrome history to see what websites he frequented for work, I discovered that he found a coworker’s — who does burlesque — web page which has all kinds of nudity on it. He was regularly looking at these photos of her. This is not necessarily on his work computer, but likely his personal phone because Chrome syncs browser info. So it’s not necessarily about company property.
But the thing is … I should tell no one, right? Because he’s already fired? And because maybe the burlesque coworker gave him the link? I definitely don’t tell any bosses, and I maybe don’t need to say anything to her? I don’t want her to be in trouble. But no need to tell her because what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her? And she has it out in public because she wants to?
We don’t have permanent, on-site HR here, but our home office has acting HR people that we don’t communicate with much. I just … tell no one, right? Or document it somehow?
Tell your coworker. Maybe she gave him the link, or maybe she didn’t and would want to know and have the option to lock it down. It’s not sexual harassment to alert her to this. You can simply say, “I wanted to let you know that when I was clearing out Bob’s computer, I found he was regularly looking at your burlesque page. You might be totally fine with this, but in case you weren’t aware of it and wouldn’t want coworkers accessing it, I wanted to give you a heads-up.”
Don’t loop in HR on this — you don’t want your coworker to deal with any hassle from them, and it could end up playing out that way. Just give her a simple heads-up, and then move on.
3. Coworkers Are Planning a Weekend Bridal Shower for Me and I Don’t Want to Go
I have a (good) problem in that my coworkers are friendly and generous. I’m getting married in the fall, and my coworkers apparently decided amongst themselves to throw me a bridal shower.
The problem:
- I do not consider these coworkers to be my friends outside of work. That wouldn’t be a huge issue if this were a bridal shower held during lunch or happy hour — but it’s being held in a different town at a coworker’s house.
- I don’t have a car because I live in the city, and it’s going to be a two-hour round trip for me on a Saturday to go to a bridal shower in the suburbs that I never asked for.
- None of these coworkers have been invited to the wedding, and while I’m happy to chat about my wedding at work as small talk, I’m not interested in having coworkers be part of any of the wedding or pre-wedding activities.
- We have very different ideas of fun outside of work, and there’s a large generational divide. They’ve invited their work friends, but not mine.
How can I politely bow out of this without burning a bridge? My weekends are precious to me, and I also want to set a clearer boundary that I do not want or expect coworker involvement in my wedding or wedding planning. These coworkers are all my peers, not managers.
You can get out of this — just do it quickly before the planning goes any further. You can say, “It’s so kind of you to offer to do this, and I’m really grateful. My weekends are bananas right now, so doing it on a Saturday won’t work — would you be up for doing it during lunch one workday instead?”
If you don’t want to offer up that alternative, you could instead say, “It’s kind of you to offer to do this! But I think I’d rather not have a work shower — the rest of my life is so full of wedding stuff right now that it’s a relief to keep work more of a wedding-free zone. Still, it was so lovely of you to think of it — thank you for making the offer!“
4. Company Won’t Hire Me Because I Live in California
I applied for an online tutoring position for which I am well qualified. I was told that they are not hiring anyone from California due to having to make them employees per a new law in effect here, AB5, which limits companies’ ability to classify workers as independent contractors.
I make good money, have to maintain a home office and its technical equipment, and have no need of the employee protections. When I apply for a position, can I give a different address so they can treat me as someone living in a different state? It is an online position so where I live does not matter.
Where you live does matter, because the company will be subject to the employment laws in that state. If California law says they’d need to make you an employee rather than a contractor, they can’t violate the law just because you don’t care if they follow it — they’d be subject to penalties regardless. You can’t opt out of the law on an employer’s behalf.
Lying about what state you’re in would be fraudulent — are you going to give them a different address on your tax forms too? — and would put the company at risk. It would be an unethical thing to do to a company that’s simply trying to follow the law.
