my boss expects the same work from me after I go part-time, I left a work event because of too much noise, and more

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

1. I’m worried my boss will expect the same work from me after I go part-time

I work for a university in a staff position and have no coworkers who share my responsibilities; it’s only me and my boss running our programs. I am also currently enrolled in the university as a graduate student, and my boss is my advisor. I like to think I have a great relationship with my boss; she’s been a wonderful mentor and I’ve learned a lot. However, she can be scattered and unreliable, and while I don’t think she takes the work I do for granted, she sometimes doesn’t realize some of her decisions succeed only because I’m there to pick up the slack. For example, she recently decided to massively expand the study area for a research project we do. This decision has led to me having to spend multiple days out of the office doing field work alone to get everything prepared for the research period (which occurs multiple times a year), since she cannot assist me due to her existing obligations. While I enjoy this work, it throws a wrench in my daily workflow and I’ve had to adjust my schedule and work overtime to accommodate it several times.

The funding for my position will run out next month, and we don’t have funding for me to continue at full-time after that date passes. Instead, I’ll be dropping to part-time until the end of the year. I’ll actually stay on the payroll until next spring using my accrued leave to get my tuition waived, but for all intents and purposes my position will be terminated in December. I’ll also be entering the research phase of my thesis work this fall, so I don’t actually mind the drop in hours. However, I’m worried my boss still expects the same level of work from me, both in the fall as a part-time employee and in the spring when I’m not supposed to be working at all, and hasn’t started to prepare for my departure. I feel comfortable putting my foot down and saying no if she asks me to do something beyond my decreased responsibilities, but by doing so I’ll basically be watching everything I’ve worked on crash and burn because she cannot manage it herself and doesn’t have the funding to bring on someone else in my stead. I’m also concerned that the additional work added to her plate will make her neglect her duties as my academic advisor. I’m supposed to graduate next spring, but I have a real concern that may be impacted or even delayed by this change.

I’m wondering if you can give me advice on how to “brace for impact,” so to speak. All I can think to do at the moment is sit her down and try to plan how to scale back our workload, but I don’t know how effective it will be even if she’s receptive to the idea. I don’t want to avoid her outside of my new 20-hour workweek to avoid getting caught up in assisting her with unrelated work either, but at this point I’m afraid I might have to. Is there anything else you can recommend?

Sit down with her now to go over the specifics of what will no longer be getting done once you move to part-time hours so it’s explicitly spelled out. You can also present potential trade-offs for her to choose from, like “I can do A and B but not C, or I could do C but not A and B. Which do you prefer?” You should also specifically name what you’re worried about: “I’m worried that without a clear plan for exactly how my job will change next month, X will happen to the Y project, or you might still be looking to me to manage Y after I no longer can.” You can mention your worries about what you’ll need next year too: “I’m going to need XYZ from you to graduate and I know you’re going to be swamped. Is there anything we can plan out now to navigate that better?”

That may or may not work, but it’ll give you your best shot at managing the situation (along with your willingness to refuse to take on extra work once you’re part-time, which is crucial too).

Related:
my new job wants me available full-time but only pays me for part-time

2. I left a work event because of too much noise

I work in a public-facing field. Occasionally we set up an info table off-site at events like a back-to-school night or street festival.

At a recent street festival, our table was almost within touching distance of large speakers. We could not clearly communicate with the guests stopping by (I could shout a sentence or two, but not converse with any nuance). I felt uncomfortable, and downloaded an app to check noise levels. It showed levels that hovered around 80 decibels but rose often over 85 or even over 90. I was able to research that OSHA’s noise regulations kick in if noise is 85 decibels or higher “as an eight-hour time-weighted average” but not any clear information about a shorter period of time. I texted the person from our organization who was coordinating the event, asking who we should speak to about having one of the speakers moved or the music turned down and specifically mentioned the decibel level and that I wasn’t sure it was safe. They responded that they didn’t think we could do anything, but that there was enough staff present that I could leave and return to my usual location.

I did leave — aside from being uncomfortable, I have moderate hearing loss and don’t take chances — but still feel awkward about the whole thing. I don’t know anyone else who was working but they were all people with less clout in the organization, mostly on-call staff who just fill in as needed and might not have felt comfortable complaining. So either I was being a bit precious by leaving, or I was leaving behind some more vulnerable staff. (I did tell them what my app was showing.) Was it reasonable for me to bail under those circumstances?

Yes — but ideally you would have first talked to the other staff there about whether they felt comfortable staying or not. As what sounds like the most senior person there, you were well-positioned to ask if they felt comfortable remaining despite the noise or would prefer to leave — and then if they wanted to leave, you could have advocated for that to happen (or, depending on what you felt you had standing to do, simply informed the event coordinator that you were making that call). Even if they said they were comfortable staying, it also might have been worth raising the question of whether staying would achieve your team’s goals or not; if you were just there to have a visible presence, maybe it would, but if the point of being there was to talk with people who came by your table and the noise made that impossible, staying might not have been a good use of anyone’s time.

It’s still worth raising those questions with someone in charge now, so that there’s clearer agreement about what to do if a similar situation comes up again (and so everyone staffing these events has guidance about it ahead of time).

3. How to talk to an employee about inappropriate Teams use

One of my employees (an indirect report) posts messages to Teams in a way that several people on the team find excessive, distracting, and problematic in various ways but that aren’t outright violating workplace policies. The messages often have typos or formatting issues and could be improved by better editing and being shared in a more conscientious manner.

We have encouraged this person to share similar posts in a dedicated channel (so that we aren’t all pinged with each post) but those messages get little traction and the person ends up sharing multiple (lengthy) messages in the general group chat.

I expect the advice would be to have clear etiquette guidelines for posting to the chat and have me or the direct manager explain to the person why many of their posts are an issue for the team and what we expect going forward.

But how do you address a situation where the person seems to not realize that their posts are problematic? And where some of what they post is appreciated but about 80% of their posts are likely unnecessary? Telling them not to post to the platform seems extreme. Having to actively monitor someone’s posts (when it isn’t a case of harassment or other workplace wrongdoing) doesn’t seem like the best use of management time. Or is it?

No one should have to actively monitor their posts to manage this if you address it more directly. Right now you’re relying on hints when they haven’t worked. Instead, their manager needs to have a more direct conversation with them and tell them explicitly to stop. “Encouraging” them to put the posts in a different channel clearly hasn’t been enough; it’s time for much clearer direction without softening the message (like “stop doing X” versus “it might be better to do Y”).

I think you and their manager haven’t done that because it seems like this person should just get it the way other people have, and it feels too heavy-handed to lay out rules for something like this — but when it’s clear the person isn’t getting it, this is the right next step. Plus, to someone who’s not picking up on hints, explicit instruction often won’t feel like too much; instead, it might feel like a relief to be handed the playbook everyone else is using. (But even if it does strike them as overly heavy-handed, it’s still better to make those expectations explicit to them than to let them go on annoying everyone.)

Related:
how can I stop softening the message in tough conversations with my staff?

4. Should I contact my former manager to thank her for how she handled my assault?

A few years ago, I was in grad school and working a hospitality job when a client sexually assaulted me during an event. I reported it immediately to my manager, who handled the situation with an immense amount of kindness and professionalism. My company was very big, and along with dealing with their atrocious workers compensation process and intense therapy and living very far away from almost all my family and friends and having no support system, I never got the chance to speak to my manager afterwards. I also left the company and the country abruptly as soon as I was able to and didn’t say goodbye to many coworkers who I’d been very close to.

I’ve since moved to a different continent and am working in an amazing job in my field (thanks to your resources!) and thriving professionally. With time and distance and lots of therapy, I’ve been able to fully appreciate how capably my manager handled things that night and how much kindness she showed me on probably the worst day of my life. During my recovery, which was awful, her kindness was one of the things that I held on to. I feel a little regretful that I left so abruptly and even more so knowing that most people at my company had no context for why I did that.

Would it be appropriate to reach out to my ex-manager to thank her for what she did for me that night? And would it be appropriate to do that via LinkedIn? I’m in a completely different field now and don’t need anything from her, I’m only reaching out to thank her, but I don’t have any of her social media so LinkedIn would be the only place I can think to contact her. What sort of script would you recommend if I were to contact her?

She would probably really appreciate that! You could let her know that you left so quickly that you didn’t get a chance to tell her that you appreciated how she handled things that night, and how you’re doing now. If you want to share what you said here about her kindness being one of the things you held on to during your recovery, I suspect she would be very moved by that. (And it would be perfectly fine to use a LinkedIn message to say it.)

Also, please don’t feel any guilt or regret over leaving so abruptly. Sometimes things happen in life that mean you do need to leave a job very abruptly (including things like health crises or family emergencies too) and that’s okay! You had zero obligation to prioritize a smooth transition out of the job at a time when you had so much more going on.

5. How can I decline a promotion I don’t want because of my health?

I’ve been at my current job for a year. I left a high intensity job that I’d had for 15 years for this role because it has fewer responsibilities and is significantly easier, even if it’s not what I want to be doing, in order to prioritize my chronic illness.

That said, my manager is dropping hints that I will be offered a promotion soon to a managerial role. I’ve been trying to respond with hints of my own that I’m happy where I am and I like my job as it is, but it’s clear that a promotion may be on the table.

I not only don’t want to be promoted (I don’t mind my job but I certainly don’t want to do a harder version of it), I also can’t manage a more difficult role due to my health needs taking priority.

How can I respectfully turn down a promotion without revealing personal health information? My manager has no idea I have a chronic illness — that’s why I wanted an easier job in the first place, so I could be successful at it within my limits — and I worry if I mention I’m declining to prioritize my health, it will affect how my manager and my small company sees my overall ability to do the job I currently have, too.

How explicit are these hints? If she’s saying something like “I’d love to move you into a management role role at some point,” it’s okay to just be direct and say, “I appreciate the vote of confidence, but I’m really happy with the job I’m in and took it specifically because I didn’t want management responsibilities anymore.” Or, “I’ve had management jobs in the past and it’s not an area I want to move back into, but thank you for thinking of me.”

If you say that and they formally offer it to you at some point anyway, you can decline using similar language. You don’t need to get into health issues at all — although if they’re really pushing, you can say that you have commitments in your non-work life right now that mean you can’t take on the responsibilities they’re proposing.

Your boss is probably assuming you’d be happy with a promotion; it’s just a matter of explaining that’s not in fact the case.

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