These are four answers to four questions. Here it is…
1. Is it unreasonable to expect student workers to check their email?
I work at a fairly small college, and I’m noticing that more and more students are not checking or responding to their email regularly. Some of my colleagues say they have to message students to get a response. I really don’t want to do this unless it’s a time sensitive situation.
My tendency is to tell students (who work for me anyway) that email is still a really common business tool and they have to get used to it because it will become part of their professional lives in some time to come. But I also recognize that I have worked here for almost 15 years, and the norms may have changed. So is email still as widely used as I think? Or am I out of touch?
Email is still widely used in the workplace. You’re not out of touch about this – or at least you haven’t been for as long as you have. told These students are told that your office uses email for communication and they are expected to check it with at least It’s true that students are still not using email in their personal lives in the way that students before them did, and so you need to let them know what you expect – but after that, it’s reasonable to expect them to do so, although you may need to reinforce this with a few reminders.
However, for what it’s worth – even if the email were not Still widely used in the workplace, you can still ask them to use it if you need to; Employers require employees to use specific communication tools at all times (be it email or Slack or Teams or On). But you can definitely tell them that this will be something they will need to get used to for future jobs as well.
Connected:
Employee did not check email for 60 days
2. Should I tell my manager that a salesperson was rude to me?
I work for a small retail store (Store A), which is owned by a larger chain of similar stores (Chain B), which is itself owned by an even larger chain of stores (Chain C). Getting things approved or fixed is ridiculously difficult because there are so many hurdles we have to go through. We get a lot of promises from big bosses which are never fulfilled. It’s frustrating for us, but my manager is an angel and doesn’t take any nonsense and puts together a lot of high-level stuff for us.
He’s on (a well-deserved!) vacation at the moment and today I answered a phone call from a salesperson. He told me that Chen Si has not paid any of our bills for his business since August. I was shocked and kind of screamed and laughed and said, “Oh, that’s ridiculous, I’m so sorry-” and she cut me off and told me it wasn’t funny and needed to be fixed.
I am autistic and often laugh in inappropriate situations when surprised or confused. I wasn’t laughing at him; This was a desperate reaction because of course Chen Si didn’t pay that bill, they never pay anything on time! I apologized and tried to explain to her that Store A doesn’t even get a response from Chain C when we need things, let alone when they owe people money, and she cut me off again suddenly saying how isn’t it funny and how unprofessional we are and that she needs to be paid.
I understand that what Chen Si is doing is hurting his business, and it would be even more frustrating than that for me as an employee, but I can’t stop thinking about him! Due to my autism I don’t know if I am taking it more personally than I should, but the salesman was so rude to me over something that I have no control over at all.
My manager is in constant contact with Chen B and Chen C and is trying to motivate them to actually do the things they should be doing but we are at the bottom of their priorities. It sucks, but there’s literally nothing more we can do to fix things than before; It’s all above our heads.
Part of me thinks I should tell my manager about the call when he gets back, but leave the salesperson’s rude behavior aside. Another part of me wants his no-nonsense side to tell him to direct his anger at the people who are actually screwing him. We deal with his company frequently and it would bother me if I had to continue communicating with him despite knowing how rude he is. I’ve been in retail for over a decade and I’m used to being rude to customers, but it shocked me that another business we work closely with could treat me so rudely. Do I tell my manager? Should I try to shake it off?
I don’t find his response insulting! He’s justifiably frustrated that he hasn’t been paid since August, and when you laughed he probably felt like you weren’t taking it seriously. I think you were laughing more than disgusted at what Chen Si is doing, but that’s not necessarily obvious to someone who doesn’t know you and doesn’t have that context and is already upset. He’s probably doing business with your store, Store A, and he doesn’t have to care about the complexities of how Store A’s bills will be paid – just that he gets the money he owes Store A. And while I understand why you feel she should direct her anger at the people who are really responsible, at you. Are Representing Store A, regardless of how much power you have (or more accurately, don’t) in this situation.
Don’t think he was disrespectful; He just told you it wasn’t funny… which it isn’t, and while I know you didn’t mean “it’s funny” by laughing, it’s very common for someone to interpret laughter as light-heartedness that doesn’t match the situation they’re in.
You should definitely let your manager know when you get back that this salesperson is upset, but your focus should be on the fact that he’s disappointed that he still hasn’t been paid, not on the fact that he was rude – because for the reasons above it doesn’t sound like he really was!
3. Informal references and “character assassination”
I have recently joined the management team of a company and we are in the process of hiring for several positions. Some candidates have worked with previous colleagues, although they were not directly under me. When I told my new team members that I would be happy to reach out to my network and get information about these potential new hires, I was informed that I should not do this under any circumstances. We have to limit our reference checks to only the names shared by job candidates. If we talk to someone who was not an official reference and we get negative information that would prevent us from hiring the candidate, we could be sued for “defamation of character.”
Is it true? Can we really only talk about official references? And if so, does that mean that references are basically useless? Of course, an applicant will only provide names of people who will speak well of them. But it may mean that someone with a history of racism or sexual harassment or other problematic behavior basically has an equal opportunity with other candidates who appear for an interview. When it comes to hiring, experience has taught me that an applicant’s past behavior and work habits are a good indicator of future performance. Limiting ourselves to resumes, interviews, and approved work references diminishes our ability to make informed hiring decisions. So should organizations basically throw reference checks out the window? If a co-worker mentions that an applicant was passed over for poor performance, should I shrug it off and try to forget I ever heard that information?
No, that’s not true, at least if you’re in the US It’s perfectly legal to check any references you want, whether they’re provided by the candidate or not, and as long as you’re not basing it on information about their race, religion, disability, or other protected characteristics, you’re allowed to incorporate what they tell you into your hiring decision.
Your team’s stance is especially strange because they are indicating that your company Could get in trouble for “character assassination” (by which they probably mean defamation) when the company would not be the party to the “assassination of their character” in this situation; If one were on shaky legal ground in thinking this, it would be the reference itself – but it is not, as US law is clear that it is legal to provide honest and accurate references.
Connected:
We Got Hired Without Checking References…And It Went Too Bad
4. Are company handbooks legally binding?
Are company handbooks legally binding in any way?
My very small company does not have its own handbook. However, when the company started, we were given a handbook from another (larger) company. The obvious implication was that the handbook applied to our company, but no one has so much as mentioned the handbook in the 15 years of my company’s existence.
I ask mostly as a hypothetical exercise. There are certain sections in the handbook that some current employees may potentially be found in violation of (these would not be actual legal matters, just procedural points stated in the handbook). But there are several sections in the handbook that describe company obligations that have been completely ignored. If the company fired an employee based on a handbook violation, would that employee have a legal basis to counterclaim that the company’s failure to maintain its own handbook-defined obligations negates the handbook altogether? Given how US employment law has always worked, I’m guessing not. But I’m interested in your opinion.
This depends on the specifics and can vary by state, but in many cases courts have ruled that promises made in employee handbooks can be contractual promises, especially when an employer writes that he or she “will” or “does” a particular action (as opposed to “can” or “may”). But again, this varies depending on the exact circumstances – and either way it’s probably controversial here because it’s a handbook that’s from another company and hasn’t been mentioned in the last 15 years.
However, if this were a currently used handbook, your hypothetical employee probably would not have the type of recourse you are talking about. Employers can fire employees whatever they want (unless it’s for a specific illegal reason, such as discrimination or in retaliation for exercising legally protected rights, such as reporting harassment). It is possible that the employee may have a full apart A case against the company for breaking legally binding promises (again, if the promises made in question would qualify as legally binding), but this will not negate the company’s ability to legally fire them for anything else; This would be a separate issue.
