is my girlfriend’s boss crossing a line, commenting on food expenses from a business trip, 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 girlfriend’s boss crossing a line?

My girlfriend is a manager at a psychiatric office, but I feel that her male boss crosses the line in conversations — for example, giving her his opinion on periods and how she shouldn’t have one and telling her she should get a IUD and so on. They just got a new building and she told me they were going to drive across town to pick out furniture, which I told her I felt would be inappropriate. She got very defensive and started telling me I was being weird. I’ve voiced how I feel before just to be ignored, and with this specific situation I feel like there are many other options that could have been taken to get furniture. Would love to hear your opinion!

It’s not weird for her to go with her boss to pick out office furniture. That’s a pretty unremarkable thing that might happen in a small office.

It is weird for him to discuss her period with her. But I also don’t know what the context was for that conversation or how comfortable your girlfriend feels with him or how active a participant she was in the discussion.

If your girlfriend feels her boss is crossing boundaries with her, you should support her in figuring out what she wants to do about that. But that would be about supporting her in her right to feel comfortable at work, not about you feeling another man is encroaching on your relationship.

2. Commenting on food expenses from a business trip

One of my pet peeves with my former manager was that after I submitted my receipts for reimbursement after a business trip, he would always comment on what I ate. (Things like: “That’s all you had for lunch? You should eat more than that!”) I think he was well-intentioned and didn’t want me to feel like I had to skimp on the company dime, but it made me really uncomfortable. I felt like I had to constantly justify not being hungry in the mornings or just wanting a snack instead of a full meal while traveling.

I recently became a manager and am now approving expense reports. One of my direct reports was on a two-day trip and only expensed one meal. (It’s possible her hotel offered free breakfast.) I wanted to ask her if she had any other food expenses to submit, with the implication that she should feel comfortable charging the company for multiple meals a day, but I hesitated because of my past experience. I didn’t want to put her in a position where she had to awkwardly explain her eating habits.

What is the right balance here?

Two options, depending on your sense of what she would be the most comfortable with. One option is to tell her the story you shared here, and then say, “I never want to make anyone feel like that so please don’t explain anything to me — but I also want to make sure you know that you can submit for three meals a day if you eat them in the future!” Alternately, you could just send a message saying, “No need to respond to this, but I noticed you only submitted for one meal on the X trip and I want to make sure you know that you can submit for three meals a day on future business trips.”

3. Company is angry that I turned down a non-offer

After a year-long job search, I received an offer from Company B for a position in a specific country. Company B is a large multinational and, after making the offer, they realized they could not fulfill the offer in the location that had been agreed on. I withdrew my acceptance and said I would reconsider if a solution could be found. I had received another offer and risked losing it if I did not make a prompt decision. After a few days without a solution (or communication) from Company B, I accepted the other offer.

The hiring manager and the connection who had referred me were both angry and said that I should have waited for them to find a solution, like start work in my home country and then potentially move to the new country in future. I have attempted to maintain good relationships with them both but they have stopped all contact.

Did I do something wrong? Was there a way to manage this differently?

As additional background, Company B has ghosted me twice. Once was after six rounds of interviews (for one position) and the other was after being told I would receive an offer (for another position). I was not confident that Company B would find a solution and did not want to risk losing another offer after more than a year of job-searching.

You didn’t do anything wrong. They made an offer and then they changed key terms of it. After that, they offered you only a possibility that maybe they would be able to come up with a new offer that you’d accept. “We might be able to find you a job in another country, one that you may or may not agree to, and either way we have no firm timeline for resolving this” is not a reasonable thing to expect you to plan around, especially when you have another offer — a real offer — waiting on your response. That goes double since they’ve jerked you around the past.

Now, maybe on their end they knew this was highly likely to be solved in just a couple of days, but they didn’t share that with you if so, and either way you weren’t obligated to wait for them, particularly with the clock ticking on the other offer. The fact that they were angry about this makes their handling of it particularly ridiculous. Disappointment would be fine! But anger is misplaced.

4. Can my employer ask for my diagnosis when I’m seeking a medical accommodation?

I am having some health issues and am considering asking for an ADA accommodation. The accommodations coordinator sent this (boilerplate) response: “Please fill out this Medical Accommodation Request Form. After receiving the request form, we will work directly with leadership on occupational development to understand your job requirements. We will then send you your job description and a healthcare provider’s medical evaluation questionnaire for your provider to review and complete, along with an authorization for release of health information for the accommodations office to assess the request. We keep the medical information received confidential for review, as it is not shared with your supervisors. As part of the process, please understand that we may explore a range of possible accommodations under the essential functions and conditions of employment.”

The form itself says: “The purpose of this form is to assist the company in determining whether or to what extent a medical accommodation may be necessary for an employee to safely and effectively perform the essential functions of their job, or to access other benefits and privileges of employment, without creating an undue hardship for the company.” It then says, “Identify and describe the physical or mental disability that is the basis for your request for reasonable accommodation(s).”

This seems like too much. I don’t want to disclose my private medical information and the exact nature of my disability to my employer. Isn’t it enough to have a doctor attest that I have a disability and the requested accommodation is relevant to it?

Oddly, there’s not a ton of guidance from the EEOC about this. Employers may be able to insist on knowing the name of your specific diagnosis or impairment as part of determining whether you have a condition that’s covered under the ADA, although some states have laws that prohibit that. Even if your state doesn’t prohibit it, you can try just giving a general description of the condition and see if they’ll accept that (for example, “I have a condition that affects my vision”).

In addition, they can’t request your complete medical records (since that’s likely to contain info unrelated to your accommodation request), so make sure that the release they want you to sign limits the info that can be shared with them.

5. Should I consider an internal move to get away from my irritating manager?

My job involves designing and implementing programs within a large nonprofit. This is a new project, so we expect growing pains as we learn how to work with one another. The pace of my current job, workload, and colleagues are great; I have work-life balance, good pay, and am in an organization with great long-term prospects. The only problem is my manager, “Lucy.” On my first day, Lucy informed me that she never wanted her job, but was appointed by a senior manager. I find Lucy to be inflexible, a poor communicator, and not very creative or strategic in her thinking. We especially differ in communication style and work approach: I want to think about a question and reserve time for deep work, whereas my manager is a frenetic “yes-woman” who gets flustered if I ever respond by saying, “I need to think about that. I often feel irritated with Lucy, and I suspect the feeling is mutual.

“Michelle” recently announced she will be leaving. Michelle, our grand-manager, and I consider it crucial for me to know what Michelle is doing, so that I can incorporate the policies she creates into my programs. Lucy, however, criticizes how much I “help” Michelle and other colleagues, reminding me that Michelle’s job is not my own. I feel as though Lucy wishes I would work with her frenzy, rather than consider questions like how the policies that colleagues design will be up to me to implement. I have tried every communication strategy I know of to work with Lucy’s style, but it remains the case that, while not an unkind person, she just isn’t a talented communicator, and (I think) is narrow in her thinking about the work.

Lucy and I met to talk about my objectives for the coming year, and she brought up Michelle’s pending departure. She asked if I would be interested in applying for Michelle’s job, or for a training-focused job that will be posted within the next year. These jobs are at the same pay grade as mine, and both would report directly to my current grand-manager (who I adore and get along with very well). I think I could be halfway competent at either role — but only halfway. I had not given it much thought, but now that my manager has brought it up, I am wondering about applying for one of these jobs, if only to get away from her. I also wonder if her bringing up the idea was a subtle suggestion. Do I apply for jobs I don’t think I am qualified for, in order to (potentially) work for a better manager? Or do I continue to work on the relationship with Lucy, and stay in my current position?

Can you imagine wanting either of those jobs if you believed you could learn to be good at them? If not, there’s no reason you need to pursue them just because Lucy mentioned them. But if you can imagine finding either or both of them appealing, why not do some more investigation? For example, you could talk to Michelle about what she thinks it takes to do the job well and learn more about the day-to-day; it’s possible you’ll realize that it wouldn’t be as challenging as you fear, or that it’s something you’d be able to master in six months. You could also talk to your grandboss since it sounds like you have a good rapport with her and she manages both of those roles; she probably has a useful vantage point about whether either of them could be a good match for you.

None of that commits you to applying, but given how frustrating you find working with Lucy while simultaneously loving the wider organization, it makes sense to at least explore it.