asking company to paint over a mural, job applicant has spotty references, and more

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

1. Can I ask my company to paint over part of an office mural?

I work at a large American law firm in a medium sized branch office (HR is based in another state). My office has this huge … corporate mural? Collage? It’s a collection of portraits of famous and “inspirational” people and “inspiring” quotes. It’s got world leaders, people from history books, athletes, authors, movie stars, etc. Each individual portrait is maybe one foot by one foot? This thing spans multiple walls, floor to ceiling, probably a couple of hundred portraits total.

This piece of “art” ends at the entrance to the office supply room, and the main pathway to the kitchen and the partner’s office. In order to get to these locations, I have to walk inches away past a portrait of Anne Frank, at eye level (she’s next to Audrey Hepburn, if you were curious). There’s an alternate path to the kitchen/partner where I only have to walk within 10 feet of Anne (still visible though).

This makes me very uncomfortable and it’s the first time I’ve ever experienced something to be so triggering. My grandparents were Holocaust/WWII survivors. My great aunt was on Schindler’s list. The Holocaust caused a lot of generational trauma in my family that’s still relevant almost a century later. Anne Frank is probably the most famous victim of the Holocaust, arguably the face of a genocide, and I find it very distracting and uncomfortable to confront her image multiple times per day.

Is this something I can reasonably address with my company? I would ideally like to see Anne Frank replaced with someone else, but I think painting over her square would be adequate. Is that a reasonable accommodation for my company make? And do you have any tips about how to raise this? I think the partners in my office would be sympathetic, but one of them is brand new (as am I, I followed him from my last firm a month ago). The more senior partner seems very nice, but I’m still getting to know her and we don’t work together directly.

I don’t think painting over Anne Frank would go over well.

In theory, the best solution would probably be to move her to a different part of the mural, but in reality I think that’s really unlikely to happen.

You’ve probably just got to take the alternate path to the kitchen and the partner. It’s not ideal, and I’m sorry!

2. Job candidate has spotty references

I’m in the process of hiring a new team member and conducted four interviews last week. One candidate stood out from the start. Her resume is solid and her interview went well. Her work examples are good — not necessarily stellar, but it’s clear she could do the job reasonably well and could be coached on industry nuances.

The problem is that her references are iffy. She provided three. I have yet to hear back from two of them in more than a week. They did not respond to emails, the texts appeared to go unread, and I didn’t receive any response to voicemails. The one who did respond emailed me over the weekend to say he would call on Monday, which he did. The conversation was sketchy. He seemed confused about who we were talking about, stumbling over her name a bit. He couldn’t give me any specific examples about projects they had worked on together or her work style. Everything was positive, but it was so vague and general that I’m having a hard time putting stock in anything he said.

When I combine that with the fact that the other two have been completely unresponsive, I’m feeling stumped. I don’t feel right holding this against the candidate. She can’t control whether or not other people respond or if they sound shaky during a phone conversation. At the same time, it’s raised questions for me about whether these are the best people she can have vouch for her. Based on what we’ve seen so far, we were expecting her to provide references that would conduct themselves much more professionally, and the fact that she couldn’t do so is an orange flag.

The position is not an immediate need and we do have other candidates. I’m just not sure what to do with this one. Do I ignore the weird references? Ask her to provide new ones? Do I mention anything to her about this at all?

Tell her that you haven’t heard back from the two, and ask if she can put you in touch with them. If she looks into it and comes back saying they’re unavailable, ask her to provide other references. And given the totality of the situation, it’s fair to ask specifically for who you’d like to talk to — as in, “Could you put me in touch with your manager from your last job?” or “Could you put me in touch with your manager from one of your two most recent jobs?”

There are reasons why someone’s references might be unresponsive (death, illness, vacation, etc.) but it’s reasonable (a) to expect her to explain if that’s the case and (b) to hold firm on wanting to talk to people who can verify her skills and accomplishments. You might need to be flexible about who you talk with, but you shouldn’t compromise on having those conversations.

Related:
what to do if your references aren’t available

3. How to tell a manager I’d like to take my incompetent coworker’s job

I have been in my current role for 12+ years, and worked at my location (and in my company) for 20+ years. I have a good working relationship with the C-suite leadership (and most of their direct subordinates) at my location, and I believe they like me.

There is a woman who got hired in 2020, and I have worked with her since she’s been hired. (She supports the C-suite leadership directly, in an upper-level capacity.) She is a terrible employee, lazy, and has tried to fail upward out of her position, and has been unsuccessful in doing so. I depend on her doing her job to do my job, and she makes me look bad at my job. I have a good relationship with her manager, and so I’ve approached her manager many times, who is very weak, who has not changed the employee’s behavior. However, I think it has recently come to a head, and the manager has told me that she is seeking a “permanent resolution to this problem.”

I’ve seen the employee’s job description, and she makes more than I do. I know I could do the job, and I think it’s something I could be good at. How do I approach the manager to say, “If you are looking to replace her, please keep me in mind?”

Leave out the “if you’re looking to replace her” part and instead just say, “If you’re ever hiring for the X role, I’d be really interested in doing that work — so if Jane moves on at some point, I’d love to talk with you about it.”

Related:
I want to tell our CEO to fire his incompetent assistant and hire me for her job

4. Coworker won’t stop clearing his throat

I work in an open office environment and one of my coworkers is constantly clearing his throat. That’s not an exaggeration — I’ve timed it and it’s usually every 5-10 seconds, all day long. It’s been like that since he started, and both HR and our leadership team have spoken to him about it. It got better for a couple weeks, but it came back and has escalated to him hacking in between throat clears.

I’m assuming it’s a medical issue, like a tic or silent reflux, and it’s none of my business. But I am losing my mind listening to it. We work from home part of the week, and I’ve started to dread the days I have to come into the office because I know I will have to listen to it all day long.

It’s a small office, so there isn’t anywhere for either one of us to move that would solve the issue. Every coworker I’ve talked to about it has agreed how annoying it is, but they seem resigned to accept it as status quo. A couple have even gotten so used to it that they’ve tuned it out, and I’m very jealous of that ability. Not only can I not tune it out, I am constantly on edge.

This is clearly impacting me more than anyone else, and I’m at a loss of what to do. I’ve already made it known to HR and the leadership that it’s a problem, and it seems like they’ve done what they can in terms of having a conversation about it. But what else can be done?

Wearing headphones in my office is uncommon, and they don’t block out the sound anyway. Noise canceling headphones would be extremely out of sync with the culture, but I’m getting desperate enough to be the oddball who can’t hear when people are trying to get my attention.

I’ve thought about asking to switch my work from home days so we only overlap in the office one day rather than three, but it would be a disruption to my current schedule and would impact my work if I wasn’t in the office when everyone else is. Is there anything I haven’t thought of yet? Should I push the leadership team on this even more?

There’s probably nothing else the leadership team can do. They talked to him, it’s still happening, and they can’t insist someone solve a medical issue that may be unsolvable. (It’s true that he solved it for a few weeks after they spoke to him, but that could be because to do it he used a medication that had side effects he can’t tolerate long-term, or that the effort involved in controlling a tic isn’t sustainable long-term, or other reasons that aren’t really our business.)

So wear the noise-canceling headphones. If you think it’ll be out of sync with your office’s culture, explain to your boss why you’re doing it. It sounds like they’re aware of the problem and tried to address it, so they shouldn’t be surprised that you’re going to try this to tune it out. Changing your work-from-home days is an option too, but you said it would impact your work to not be around when everyone else is, so the headphones are the less disruptive option.

5. Can I ask if we’re not getting any raises for four years?

My entire company just received an email from the top saying that due to federal funding cuts, there would be no raises this year.

It didn’t take me long to realize that these cuts would be in place until at least 2029. So we won’t be getting raises for four years. I’d like to ask them if this is an accurate statement, but I’m not really certain if I should. Thoughts?

Now isn’t the time; it just happened and they’re still working out what it means (and possibly trying to figure out whether they need to make staffing cuts). Let the dust settle a bit.

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