is my employee taking credit for my work, manager favors our two-faced coworker, and more

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

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

1. Is my employee’s conference presentation taking credit for my work?

My question is one part reaction check, one part management advice. I run a small marketing team that didn’t exist at this company before I created it five years ago. I had some adjacent experience and figured everything else out as I went. Last year, we had an internal transfer to my team; she also didn’t have any marketing experience, but was eager to learn. She was brought on to expand upon and lead some social media marketing projects that I had done some work on, but had been stretched too thin to dedicate the time needed for it.

Fast forward 18 months, and she reached out for financial support to attend an industry conference. She wanted to learn more about social media strategy and develop her skills. This is great! I love continuous education opportunities for my team! I approved the request.

The next week I found out via a LinkedIn post she made that she applied and was accepted as a speaker at the conference, with the topic of how to create a social media function at a small company. In this post, she shared that she was able to build this function on her own, and she was excited to share her expertise with others at this conference. She has not mentioned to me directly that she will be a speaker.

So going back to my two-part question: First, the way she describes her role and her projects in the post effectively cuts my work and guidance out of the picture. I know I’m taking this too personally, but how “too personally?” I want to be a supportive manager and I want her to feel empowered, but frankly, this makes me less excited to be a cheerleader for her because it feels like she just took the credit.

Secondly, I think there is some genuine feedback to give here, but I’m struggling to parse it out from my personal feelings. She misrepresented her goals for the conference in her proposal and she’s misrepresenting her expertise to conference attendees (who are paying thousands of dollars!). However, it’s not affecting her work at our company, so is it even something I should be addressing? If so, how? If not, advice on letting this go?

Is she misrepresenting her expertise to conference attendees? It’s pretty normal for speaker bios to present the speaker in the best possible light, and usually they don’t include things like “under the tutelage of ManagerName” (unless the manager is so well-known that their name would be a draw). Granted, I don’t have all the facts that you do, but it doesn’t sound that outrageous for her to frame her work as building out your social media function; it sounds like she was hired to lead those projects. That doesn’t negate the work you did before she came on board or undermine you as her manager. If there’s something specific about the way she’s framing things that feels truly fraudulent, you’d of course want to address that — but otherwise this sounds like pretty standard conference speaker stuff.

It’s not clear to me whether she knew she was speaking at the conference when she asked you to fund her attendance. If she did, it’s a little surprising that she didn’t mention it, but not necessarily nefarious. You could just raise it with her and see what she says! For example: “I saw you’re leading a session on X! That’s great. You didn’t mention it when you asked for funding, so I wanted to make sure you know that’s something we love to see and would always appreciate knowing about.” (And if there are details that make this weirder that weren’t in the letter, you could change that to, “I was surprised you didn’t mention it when we talked about funding to attend — any reason for that?”)

2. Our manager favors our rumor-spreading, two-faced coworker

I work in a small team within a big organization. The team has been fairly close, but that all changed recently when we found out that one of our coworkers, Sam, has been spreading malicious rumors about another coworker who had to take time off for personal and family issues (miscarriage/sickness/vacation), saying things to the management team like how they’re always out or calling out sick whenever. They also spread rumors about people “taking advantage” of the hybrid schedule whenever we were not on-site. We confronted Sam privately (and separately) and they said there was no malicious intent. We later found out multiple other teammates had asked them to stop spreading negative rumors about their own teammates.

Then we realized our direct supervisor was privately emailing Sam for assignments and projects, and none of the rest of us would ever be included in the communication. So whenever Sam would call out for a broken fridge or car troubles, we would suddenly be asked to do double work because there had been no communication previously about the work. As time went on, we found out that Sam had also been stealing credit for the team’s work, which we also asked them to stop — but they believed they were right to do so, based on “last person to touch” logic.

We spoke with management about the lack of communication and respect from Sam, but also the lack of transparency from our supervisor funneling all communication to Sam. The resolution was that the supervisor would speak directly with Sam.

A few months after their conversation (which no one else was present for) the supervisor continues to privately message Sam, who now informs the team that they’re working on “something else” for the supervisor, but never shares the information with the us, likely out of spite. Sam also gets super passive-aggressive whenever the team decides to work on projects and not include them. I’ve tried pushing for collaboration and open communication, but so far nothing has improved. What can I do? Should I just look to transfer/promote to another team?

Yes, or even look outside the company altogether. Your managers know about the issue and, for whatever reason, aren’t acting on it. There’s too much drama around Sam and your supervisor, and you don’t have the power to fix it. Your best move is to just get out.

3. How did I make this terrible hire?

I’m an in-house recruiter in a medical start-up. About three weeks ago, I made a job offer to someone I felt was an excellent fit for a sales role. They happily accepted. Well, the hiring manager informed me two weeks ago that I might have to find a replacement because the new hire had been rude to her and to the trainer her first week. Very odd as these are both friendly and professional people. I don’t know the specifics but was told that the hire was very rude and mean during training, which is done over video (we’re a fully remote company), and in several emails to the manager. This rather shocked me as the candidate was perfectly lovely to me, behaved professionally, and was very well qualified for the role.

Last week, this hire resigned suddenly, claiming they hadn’t been paid. We pay bi-weekly and the deposit had not yet hit their bank account. I always go over the specifics of pay during the screening so they were fully aware of this.

Nothing like this has ever happened to me before and I’ve made hundreds of hires over the years. I’ve been in HR for many years and thought I had developed a thick skin, but I can’t shake the idea that I’m partly to blame for not seeing something during the interview. I can’t recall a single red flag either during the screening, formal interview, or afterwards in our emails. And no, we didn’t contact references. My company doesn’t do reference checks. Maybe we should start?

Sometimes you are going to make bad hires because it’s not a perfect science! If this is your first hiring mistake after hundreds of hires, you’ve been very lucky … although I suspect previous bad hires might have been more along the lines of “can’t do the job the way we need it done,” whereas this person just seems like a jerk and so you feel like you should have spotted that earlier.

Except it’s not always something you can spot in a hiring process! Some people interview very well and can hold it together for a few meetings or when the stakes feel particularly high but are horrible to work with. It sounds like this person was one. (Alternately, any chance there’s something else going on, like that you and the candidate were both male and the manager and trainer were both women? It’s worth thinking about — but sometimes people are just jerks and there’s nothing deeper happening.)

However, yes, you should do reference checks. They can significantly decrease the chances of surprises like this.

4. My housekeeper’s daughter doesn’t have any books

I employ a housekeeper, Maria. I am very happy with her work. Maria is a recent immigrant who speaks only Spanish. I used to speak Spanish well; I now have a medical condition that makes it hard for me to remember words in any language, but I still do my best.

Recently, Maria had a childcare issue and brought her first-grade daughter, Katie, to my home while she worked. That is not a problem. I gave Katie the basket of age-appropriate toys I keep on hand; Katie entertained herself for a while, then went out of her way to talk to me. Katie also only speaks Spanish. Katie told me that she had a book that was teaching her to read and write before she immigrated with her family, but she had to leave it behind, and now she does not have any books at home. I pulled out my collection of age-appropriate books and Katie spent the rest of her mom’s work time reading and describing pictures to me, I think very happily. I confirmed with Katie that she goes to school; she gave me several relevant details that make me completely sure she is in school.

I know Maria is a good mother who cares deeply about her children. Also, there’s a child in my community who obviously loves reading and says she has no books at home. If Katie were any other child in my life, I would know exactly what to do: make sure the family has access to the library (which has a great Spanish section), get Katie a couple books of her own, and let Maria know I would be happy any time to help make sure Katie always has access to books.

However, Katie is my employee’s daughter. Maria is great at taking feedback about her work, but she is less open to feedback in other areas. (Once, I forgot the word for “light” when she told me something was light, so I asked if she would like help carrying it; she gave me a speech about how she is an independent woman and I should let her work.) I think I have a generally positive relationship with Maria, but I know my impression is complicated by her having to be nice to me for her job, as well as cultural barriers. I also do not think Maria working for me means she has to hear my thoughts on her parenting.

However, I would love to help Katie have access to books at home if there is a reasonable and respectful way for me to do this. (For example, my niece has outgrown several books that are bilingual in English and Spanish and her parents want to give them away – could I offer them to Maria? I would also be happy to buy Katie new books.) If there is a good script for this situation, there are fluent Spanish speakers in my life I could contact for help getting it exactly right in Spanish.

I think you might be overthinking it! Buy Katie a few Spanish-language books or get the ones your niece has outgrown and ask Maria if Katie would like them. You could say, “I saw how much she loved looking at books when she was here so I wanted to give her some as a gift.”

I suspect you’re worried there’s some inherent criticism of Maria for not supplying Katie with books herself, but that doesn’t need to be the subtext at all. After all, you could offer Katie some books even if she had her own extensive stash at home — and you can approach this just like you would then.

5. How do I correct people who call me the wrong name via email?

You recently published a letter where the writer asked how to get people to spell their name correctly, and it reminded me of a similar (and kind of bizarre) issue I’ve been having.

Our email addresses are all in the format [first initial][last name]@company.com, and we have a standard Outlook signature that contains our full name, company website, etc. Surprisingly often, clients will respond to an email from me with some form of “Thanks, [my email alias]!” instead of “Thanks, [my actual name as shown in my signature]!” Weirder still, they don’t even spell the alias correctly as it appears in my email address.

Let me try to illustrate what I mean. Say my name was Katherine Eavon. My company email address would be keavon@teapotsinc.com, right? And all of my emails are signed, in bold letters, “Best regards, Katherine Eavon.” But I have clients responding with “Thanks Kevin!” and even calling my office — having presumably gotten the phone number from the signature with my actual name — and asking for Kevin.

It’s such a small issue but I just can’t wrap my head around the logic. I could maybe understand the occasional “thanks Keavon,” but like … do they think my email alias is my first name spelled incorrectly? Are there that many people using software that purposely hides email signatures? Is my name really Kevin and no one told me?

It happens so often that it’s become a bit of a running joke in our office. One of my coworkers gave me a Hello, My Name Is Kevin name tag as a gag gift. It’s all in good fun around the water cooler, but how do I reply to clients and say, “Hey jackass, check my signature, that’s not my name” without sounding rude?

I think it’s the same basic reason as why people address their emails to Allison when my email address with Alison is right in front of them. In your case, their eyes are glancing on what they process as a version of the name “Kevin” and their brains go “noted, Kevin,” and then their brains convert it to the spelling they’re most familiar with when they type it out. They’re not thinking about any more than that (definitely not to the point of wondering why your email address spelled it differently).

I’d just include “My name is Katherine, not Kevin!” when you reply … but, similar to the letter from earlier this week, the more you can not care, the better.

Also, though, any chance your company would change your email address to katherine@? Big companies are often wed to standardized email address formats, but if you’re at a smaller company they might be willing to just change it.