my boss asked why I married my wife, I can’t breathe when my coworkers microwave shellfish, and more

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

1. My boss asked why I married my wife

I have been happily married for almost 20 years to a Russian lady (born in Russia when it was the Soviet Union), whom I met on the Internet. I work for a small, non-federal, governmental agency. The agency is small enough, where once a month, every Friday we gather after work for coffee, soda, and pizza and talk about sports, fishing, weather, and other inconsequential non-work matters. From always having to defend our agency’s budget, there is a camaraderie from shared hardship and surviving another fiscal year, occasionally even another month. The group gathering is religiously attended by the departmental director and the associate director.

About two months ago at one of these gatherings, the director asked me, “Why did you married a Russian, when are so many fine ‘local’ (read “American”) ladies to choose from?” I was too stunned to immediately answer. Likely sensing trouble, our office administrator immediately interrupted the conversation and distracted him by asking if he wanted more pizza. Then, she adroitly steered the discussion to other matters before I had to answer.

Should I avoid attending any more of these after work gatherings to avoid providing an opportunity for this question to come up again? If it comes again, how should I answer, or not answer, this question in a polite manner?

Don’t stop attending the events just because your director made one boorish comment! For the record, it was very boorish — and it would be even more so if he thinks he should ask it a second time, so hopefully he won’t. But if he does, you could just reply, “The same reason anyone marries anyone — we were right for each other.” If he pushes after that: “I’m surprised it’s even a question and don’t have any other answer.” (Or just use your office administrator’s tactic and distract him with more pizza.)

2. I can’t breathe when my coworkers microwave shellfish

This feels both oddly low stakes (it’s about a microwave) and high stakes (it’s also about a serious allergy). I have a very serious shellfish allergy, for which I carry an epipen. Multiple times, different coworkers have microwaved some form of shellfish in the office kitchen, which puts enough of the proteins in the air for my throat to start closing if I walk in the kitchen any time in the couple hours after. The individuals in question have of course been horrified and apologetic when I talked to them after the fact, but when I approached the closest thing our office has to HR, he indicated that he wasn’t willing to put up a sign saying “please no shellfish” on the microwaves. Help? (Side note, I do not know why people think it’s appropriate to microwave any form of fish in a shared work kitchen.)

This isn’t low stakes at all! It’s about your ability to breathe.

“The closest thing our office has to HR” clearly isn’t very close at all, because if he were, he’d realize that the office is required under the Americans with Disabilities Act to make reasonable accommodations to ensure an employee doesn’t stop breathing. (At least they are if you have 15 or more employees. If you don’t, it’s worth checking if your state has a law that kicks in at a lower threshold; many do.)

Go back to that person and tell him that you’re submitting an “official request under the Americans with Disabilities Act” (use those words) for a ban on shellfish being cooked in the office. Do this in writing, and cc whoever his boss is. They don’t have a choice on this; the law says they need to unless it would pose an undue hardship to them, which it won’t unless you work in a seafood restaurant.

Related:
can we ban smelly foods in the office microwave?

3. Should older workers be pushed to retire?

I was listening to an NPR podcast where someone was complaining that older workers are hogging all the good jobs and preventing younger workers from moving up to work that is more interesting — and more lucrative. There was much discussion about whether older workers should be forced to retire, or maybe only from some jobs, or only if they can afford to. (Since some people keep working because they “want” to, and some because they “have” to. And who gets to decide that?)

But what caught my attention was the argument that these older workers were no longer as productive, or perhaps creative (depending on the field), as their younger counterparts so there would be a benefit to their companies, and to society as a whole, if they were moved out of their positions. It sounded to me as if this was more an issue of management (or failure thereof), if people are being retained despite becoming less productive or even a liability. What do you think?

It’s certainly not true across the board that older workers aren’t as productive or creative as younger workers! In many cases they’re more productive or creative because they’ve had much more experience and time to build their skills. So it would be a bananapants level of ageism to enter into the argument with that as the premise. But if the argument is that some older workers aren’t as productive or creative as younger workers — sure, the same way that some brown-haired workers aren’t as productive or creative as bald workers, or some coffee drinkers aren’t as productive and creative as some tea drinkers (while the reverse of both statements is also true). In any large category of people, you’ll find some who aren’t as productive or creative as others — but attributing it to age is factually wrong.

That said, the podcast made a more nuanced argument: it theorized that younger workers get paid less than their productivity, while older workers sometimes get paid more than their productivity. Which is a different argument.

But in any case, if someone is being allowed to under-perform at work, it’s always a management issue. If an older worker — or any worker — is no longer meeting the standards for their job, it’s their manager’s job to address that … and it’s much more of a management problem than a worker problem if that doesn’t happen.

4. Advice for a teenager job seeker frustrated with hiring delays

In our somewhat small town, there are only a few employers that hire people under 18 (movie theater, grocery stores, certain locally-owned businesses).

I have a 16-year-old in my life who has been through a rather involved process to get hired to one of these. It’s been long because the employer has a lot of other issues going on (we know someone on the inside explaining this), not because it’s a particularly difficult process.

But it was all finally figured out and their first day of training was scheduled this week. Until the background check didn’t come back in time. It’s now a couple days later, and it’s extremely difficult to explain to a teenager who is also neurodivergent that these things happen and they should not be lying awake half the night worrying about it.

A job means some financial freedom in their own life, as well as helping contribute to the household (their insurance and gas is all that’s expected). We’re on the west coast, so minimum wage is now far more impressive than when I started working. They truly desire a schedule and opportunity to work hard and make some money. Any words of advice to pass along to a pre-reader of your site?

Yes! It will serve them well throughout their life if they understand early that employers often radically underestimate how long it will take for people to get hired and then to actually start work. Interview processes drag out longer than expected (because higher priorities come up, decision-makers are away, etc.), job offers take longer than anticipated to put together (same reasons, plus bureaucracy), and background checks are notorious for having delays. It’s just how this stuff goes, and the best thing any job seeker can do is to expect it from the beginning so they’re not blindsided when it happen. If things do move on schedule, let that be a pleasant surprise, rather than a disappointment when it doesn’t happen.

It’s also helpful to realize that while getting and starting the job might be one of the job seeker’s highest priorities, the business itself is juggling a bunch of competing priorities, and they might be making the right call for the business in prioritizing other things first. It doesn’t make it less frustrating on the job seeker side, but it can help to realize that your urgency doesn’t necessarily match up with what’s going on for them.

5. How should companies handle 27 payroll periods in a year?

My office has announced that because there will be 27 bi-weekly paychecks in 2027 instead of the usual 26, salaried employees will see a change to the gross amount of each paycheck. Paychecks will now be the annual salary divided by 27, which will decrease the gross amount of each check by almost 4% (which is not insignificant to me — that’s a higher percentage than they usually give for raises each year!). While I understand that employees should be made whole by the end of the year, that will be a bit of a cash crunch during many months.

Is this now standard practice? At other companies I’ve worked with, the employer made no changes and just paid out the extra paycheck. And I can’t help but feel shorted by this change.

It’s not uncommon for companies to handle it this way. Their two choices are to keep the normal biweekly amount and give employees an extra paycheck that year (and see a possibly substantial increase in their staffing costs that year, depending on how many employees they have) or to do what your company is doing and recalculate the per-paycheck amount so that the annual salary remains the same (and their total salary costs remain the same). Some employers do one and some do the other; both are pretty common.

But one thing you can look at is whether your offer letter or other official documentation of your salary lists your pay on an annual basis (in which case what they’re doing is very defensible) or whether it lists it as $X per pay period (less common, but possible).

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