coworker is questioning everyone about their pay, speaking out politically without being found out at work, and more
It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. My coworker is aggressively questioning everyone about their pay
I work at a mid-sized cultural institution, and everyone at my job level is part-time. Our managers and other staff above us are full-time employees with benefits. I also work part-time at a similar institution that pays slightly less (and have worked at others in the past) so I feel we’re well compensated here. We also get a pay bump for special duties, which I really appreciate.
A few new coworkers were hired several weeks ago, and yesterday one new person, Beth, asked me point-blank how much I make. It was a little uncomfortable to me but I understood wanting to verify that everyone at the same job title makes about the same amount of money, so I told her (in general terms, not the exact dollar amount). But then she opened up the notes app in her phone where she had a list of everyone at our job title and she typed in what my pay was next to my name. It kind of weirded me out that she was keeping a list.
Then another coworker said that Beth was not only doing this for people at our level, but was asking our managers and people more senior in the organization what they are making. For example, she asked this coworker, despite him being a contractor who isn’t paid by our organization. She also asked a department head what his pay was, in front of several other coworkers; this is wild to me because he’s salaried and with benefits from being full-time, so there isn’t even a proper way to equate our levels of pay.
This whole interaction came off as super uncomfortable to me. In my experience, it’s good to talk about the general pay range with people at your job level to make sure nobody is over or underpaid compared to their equals. But it’s weird to ask your managers, particularly people who are full time and salaried when you’re part-time and hourly. Also the notes app list of pay rates seems completely deranged. What’s your take? I know this is none of my business and I’m not pursuing the matter further, but I wanted to know if i was off-base here.
No, this is odd behavior and in most offices would come off extremely weirdly.
To be clear, talking with coworkers about pay is a good thing; it’s how pay inequities are often uncovered, and it helps everyone advocate for themselves and earn more. The taboo around talking about pay is solely to employers’ advantage.
But this is a weird way to do it and is very likely to rub a lot of people the wrong way. That doesn’t mean she’s wrong, in a vacuum … but there are savvier ways to go about collecting info.
Related:
did I make a mistake by sharing my salary with a coworker?
my company wants to stop me from discussing my salary with coworkers
2. How to speak out politically without being found out at work
I’m an executive assistant. I get along well with all the executives I support.
My main/senior-most executive is lovely, but while I suspect that our politics mostly align, there is one very controversial topic on which we disagree. I know his position on this issue because of his activity on LinkedIn. I haven’t seen him post about it specifically, but I’ve seen him engage with other people’s posts about it. As far as I know, he does not know my position on the issue because I don’t talk about it at work. He may even assume we have the same opinions due to certain shared identities.
It’s a very divisive topic, even within my own family, but lately I’ve been starting to speak out more about my views in my personal life and on social media (instagram stories and Bluesky — not LinkedIn!) because it feels like a moral obligation. People get very emotional about this issue and I’m very afraid that if this executive somehow finds out that I am on the other side it would impact our relationship, and possibly even my job security.
Social media is probably my biggest risk factor for being found out. My social media does not have my last name on it, but I don’t have privacy settings completely locked down. Do I need to suck it up and go private where I can and shut up where I can’t? Surely I am not the first person who wants to be able to openly advocate for political causes outside of work but doesn’t want those politics to be found out in the office. How do people do it?
If you don’t want to risk your executive seeing it, you shouldn’t post about it on any social media that he might come across. There’s really no way around that; you have to decide if whatever risk that could be attached to it is worth it. The risk is much lower if you lock your accounts down — but then so is your reach.
That said, posting on social media is not a terribly effective way of effecting change. If it’s an issue you want to get involved in, there are so many more effective ways of making a difference!
Related:
my colleagues are upset that we’re not “speaking truth to power” on social media
3. My team is too snarky about our new boss
My employer recently hired a new executive to oversee my section of the company, with an explicit mandate to restructure the teams under her. My team had always gotten along with our previous VP, but the new person has not hit it off with us.
An egregious example was at an all-staff meeting last week where she declared that she wanted to make common sense changes that would be improve things for everyone. What she proposed is already what we do, and frankly if we didn’t, we would be incompetent. It was frustrating to have her lack of understanding represent us in front of the CEO and other leaders.
She also likes to state that “no one understands” or “no one knows about” certain aspects of our and other teams’ work that are actually really well understood across the organization. Really it’s that SHE didn’t know or understand — which is fine, she’s still new, except that she’s then making it our problem or making us do schedule unnecessary meetings with other teams to share knowledge we already share.
My manager and other team mates have gotten into the habit of venting about this new exec and her latest demands and “innovations.” We often roll our eyes at each other or make faces at other teams. I’m definitely part of this too, but I feel like I need to rein it back in. I’m worried about accidentally saying or doing something where she can see, but more than that I just think it will be counterproductive to be so dismissive of her. I don’t want to be a kiss-ass, but she has the power to tell us what to do and obviously the higher-ups thought she was good enough to hire. Is there any way that I can influence my team, as a junior member, to give this executive a little more respect?
It’s hard to argue for giving someone more respect when they’re consistently acting in a way that undermines that respect. That said, you can give the role she’s in respect, even if you disagree with her decisions and approach, and you can recognize that regardless of your opinion of her work she’s still the executive and it’s not in your team’s interests to snark on her all the time (or to be discovered to be doing that).
As a junior team member, you probably don’t have a lot of standing to influence how others are talking about her, but you can be thoughtful about how you talk about her, and you can say things like, “I know it’s been a rocky start but I’m hoping as she learns our area more, it’ll settle down.” And really, the person who does have some standing to handle this is your manager — who should be ensuring the snark doesn’t get out of hand and also should be helping the new VP understand how your team functions.
4. Zero communication on an internal job application
Two years ago, my workplace had a big change in administration with a new executive director, assistant director, and HR manager all coming on board within a few months. Our HR was, admittedly, completely non-functional, but our new processes feel too cold and formal. Having worked here for so long, I don’t know what the norm is.
I recently applied for a position in another department, at the urging of my manager. I heard nothing for two months until I got the form email that the position had been filled. I understand they went with an external candidate. I know the hiring manager and have worked with him on a number of projects, so I was disheartened that he didn’t reach out at all. Maybe I should have reached out to him to follow up on my application? There is another position opening up with the same manager and the lack of communication has made me anxious about applying. Is this lack of communication the norm for internal candidates? And how should I approach future internal openings?
It’s not the norm, but it may be the current norm at your company. Or it may just be the norm for that one guy. Or it might not even be his norm but he just messed this particular process up. It happening once isn’t enough to extrapolate from.
But yes, in general when you apply for an internal opening and especially when you know the hiring manager, it’s good to follow up with that person personally about your application. As an internal candidate, you have a lot more standing to do that without being annoying than you’d have as an external candidate and it makes sense to take advantage of it.
5. My company says they won’t pay us for any time we don’t record on our timesheets
The company I work for recently announced that if we don’t record all of our hours on our timesheets, we won’t be paid for the time we didn’t record. I think this happened because a lot of us have gotten pretty sloppy with our timesheets and don’t always fill them out accurately in time for them to be submitted for payday, and our managers have been having to go back and make corrections. For a couple of months, we were getting regular reminders about it and that was enough to get me to shape up, but I guess it didn’t work for everyone and so now we’re being told that they just won’t pay us for any hours that aren’t logged in time for the payroll run. I’m not entirely clear but it sounds like they might pay us on the check after that one (but that would be two weeks later than we’d normally get that pay). Is this allowed?
Nope, it’s not legal for them to do that. Under federal law, employers have to pay you for all hours you worked in a pay period, whether you logged them correctly or not. How they get your time recorded accurately is up to them — and they have the right to fire people who don’t accurately log their hours if they want to — but they do need to pay you for all time worked, and they need to pay you for it in the check for that pay period, not in a later one.
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