job application asked if I’d accept the job, muscling in on a volunteer project, and more

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

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

1. Application asked, “If offered this job, will you accept?”

I am applying for jobs. One application asked the question, “If offered this job, will you accept?” Yes and no were the only options. Obviously, I clicked yes. I assume this is not legally binding. But is it a red flag? Another possible red flag is that this job has been posted for 10 months.

Ha, that’s a ridiculous question — as ridiculous as an applicant asking, “If I apply for this job, will you hire me?” Who knows, on both sides; that’s what the interview process is designed for both parties to figure out. You could discover the work is different than you’d envisioned, or you hate the manager or the culture, or the salary or benefits are too low. The question is absurd.

That said, is it a red flag? I’d say it’s a yellow one. It could have been stuck in there by some deranged HR person who’s sick of having offers turned down, whereas the actual manager would be fine to work for. But that in combination with the fact that they haven’t been able to fill the job for 10 months (if that’s what the long posting means; it doesn’t always) isn’t super promising.

Related:
when an interviewer asks, “If I offered you the job, would you say yes?”

2. A colleague we don’t want to work with is trying to muscle in on our volunteer project

I work in tertiary education, and we have an informal community of practice that unites some of us who feel kindred (people with a shared experience that puts them at a disadvantage in society and education and a desire to help people who have similar experiences). For the third time in four years a small group of us are organizing a symposium. The first was in 2021, when I partnered with a colleague, Summer, and we hosted 12 presenters over a half day. Summer was really keen but wasn’t particularly good at organizing and “lost” room bookings. They were not particularly good at the tech, managed to video all the presenters speaking from the waist down, and wasn’t particularly good at social stuff. I am autistic and even I noticed that. While it was good to have someone to bounce ideas off when we planned, it was hard work to run the event.

After the first event, Summer said that they didn’t want to organize another one. I was keen and another colleague, Zoe, wanted to work with me to organize a second event. A third colleague, Lisa, offered to help. Zoe and I worked really well together, but Lisa drifted off and stopped attending meetings a few months into the planning. Our second event had 350 attendees, had two big sponsors, flew in an international keynote and two national keynotes, we had 64 presenters, and afterwards we received a staff award at our institutional celebrations. Organizing all this was voluntary, with our managers’ and institutions’ blessing, rooms, and tech support but over and above our allocated workload. In the meantime, Summer presented a research paper about our community of practice and made some of us feel othered, and which really upset Zoe.

Now Zoe and I are planning a third event, with the blessing of our wider volunteer community. Lisa has decided to join us again, which we said was okay as we both thought she would drift away once the work began. But Lisa insists Summer be part of the team, because Summer wants to be. We have said we are working with a smaller team for now, and when we need help we will reach out and ask more people to join to team. But Lisa adds Summer into our meeting invites, and both send us emails offering their help and insisting we share our planning with them. All this has really upset Zoe, who avoid the meetings.

Lisa has accused us of not being professional because we don’t want to work with Summer and has suggested we need to learn to get along. This is a volunteer event, one we have put a lot of energy into. Are we being unreasonable to want to work with a team of our choosing? Do we have to accept everyone who wants to be part of the planning, no matter how much trouble they have caused in the past? Is there a polite way to say, “Actually, we did this last time, it was wildly successful, and it’s ours to do again this time”?

You do not need to agree to work with Summer. You and Zoe have put a ton of work into organizing these events, and you’re right to want to ensure they go well, which means paying attention to how you’re staffing them. Just because a project is a volunteer one doesn’t mean you have to allow anyone who wants to work on it to help in whatever capacity they want. You decide who to involve based on the needs of the project and your assessment of potential volunteers’ strengths and weaknesses (just like with paid work).

It’s entirely reasonable to say to Summer, “Thank you so much for offering, but we already have all the work covered.”

The bigger issue is Lisa. You and Zoe need to have a direct conversation with her where you explain that Summer was difficult to work with last time and struggled in the areas they were responsible for, and based on that experience you’re not going to be including Summer in the planning again. It doesn’t sound like Lisa has any sort of authority here; she can’t just decide on her own to involve Summer. You and Zoe are the ones who have been organizing these events and you have standing to tell Lisa no, it’s not happening, and that if she wants to help, she’ll need to understand that the two of you aren’t working with Summer again.

3. I proved my coworker wrong — did I handle this right?

I work for a small organization and very occasionally process refunds. If the person receiving the refund is to get a paper check. I hand off those requests to a teammate who has access to our bill paying software. Recently I did just that, and the person receiving the refund contacted me to complain that she had to fill out a bunch of stuff, including her Social Security number, in order to receive her refund. A legitimate complaint in my book.

I sent an email to our team (only four of us, two of whom are on point for accounting responsibilities) to let them know of the complaint and to question why it was necessary for her to jump through that hoop. A more senior team member, Eric, told me that “everyone is set up in the system as a vendor and they need to supply a SSN or EIN in order to process all payments.” I pushed back because this was a simple paper-check-issuing request, and represented a refund, not a payment to a vendor. There was back and forth, with Eric insisting that there was no way around it and that our accounting department absolutely requires such information because every vendor needs to receive a W9.

I replied again stating that this person is not a vendor, does not need to report this as income, and therefore does not need a tax form, which negates the need to collect a SSN or EIN. Eric and I got on the phone to discuss it, and he was adamant that all of this was absolutely necessary.

I was confident that he was wrong, so I researched it further on my own. I contacted the help desk for the billing software system, as well as our internal accounting department. The billing help desk confirmed that to issue a simple paper check, the system only needs a name, email, and phone number. The accounting department assured me that they do not need a W9 for end-of-year reconciliations.

I hate to be an “I told you so” kind of person, but in this case I thought I owed it to our clients to get it right and not ask for unnecessary personal information. I took this information to our manager. I felt this was the better route than emailing the team or contacting Eric directly because the message hopefully wouldn’t glaringly look like I did an end-run around them, and my manager is obviously more authoritative in communicating these things. She stated that she would confirm it with our accounting department and then deliver the message.

Did I do this right? Should I have accepted Eric at his word? Should I have told him up-front that I was going to research this myself? And finally, should I have gone directly to my manager with the info, or addressed it with Eric first once I had the answer?

You handled it fine. Eric’s claim made no sense, and you were right to look into it further, particularly as a person who has to process refunds.

If Eric hadn’t been so adamant that he was right when you talked to him about it, you could have gone back to him and said, “I looked into this a little more and billing and accounting both confirmed that we don’t need SSNs or EINs for refunds.” You could have done that even after his bullheadedness, but it’s understandable that you didn’t want to at that point and instead handed it off to your manager to deal with. (After all, you could have done that and been met with continued insistence that you were wrong and he was right, regardless of what your research found.)

I’m guessing Eric will be well aware that you were involved anyway, but since he kept insisting on something wrong, it makes sense to have someone with more authority than you correct him.

(Also, it’s weird that Eric thought you’d need W9s to issue refunds. Unless he never deals with anything involving payments or taxes, it’s useful for your manager to be aware he may have some pretty surprising gaps in his knowledge.)

4. Is my new job just not for me?

I was internally recruited and promoted to a new role that began in June. My onboarding has been terrible and I have walked into a completely dysfunctional team dynamic. My new boss is universally hated and oblivious to her lack of skills. She actually brags about how much people like her and how effective she is, when the truth is almost everyone we work with internally and externally has gone out of their way to tell me privately how much they hate her. The team I took over is being obstinate and uncooperative and claim everything I ask them to do isn’t actually their job.

In theory I have the skills and track record to work through problems like this, but I am finding this level of dysfunction overwhelming and I feel surprisingly apathetic and struggle not to be short / negative with my team. Advice on recognizing the signs personally and systematically that this just isn’t for me?

In these seven short sentences, you’ve already got strong signs of that, particularly here: “I am finding this level of dysfunction overwhelming and I feel surprisingly apathetic and struggle not to be short / negative with my team.”

Feeling overwhelmed, becoming apathetic, and feeling short with people are all very bad signs — and it’s only your third month there. If you’d been there a few years and were feeling this, I’d have other suggestions, but when it’s that bad by month three? Listen to that.