These are five answers to five questions. Here it is…
1. I work with my spouse and it is affecting my work
My spouse (“Sam”) and I work at an agency that is a small branch of a large national corporation. Sam started working here five years ago, has formed close friendships with others in the program and has an excellent professional reputation.
Three years ago, I was hired right out of graduate school for the agency site associated with Sam’s program. It is possible that I was interviewed because of their success in the field. At the time I was hired, I discussed with my manager that I would not work directly with my spouse for several reasons, including ethics and work-life balance. This was not a concern at the time because Sam was working on a special schedule and with clients in a different state. However, this changed last year.
I have learned a lot from this work. My performance reviews are good and I get positive feedback. I’ve also learned that this subset of our industry is not healthy for me to remain in. As a result, I am building my own small business with the hopes of eventually leaving this company, and I have transitioned to half time. Additionally, after a lot of therapy and introspection, I discovered that I was very unhappy in my marriage. I see parts of Sam that our colleagues never see. Working from home, living with them and sharing coworking space is very difficult. At a minimum, I would like us to live separately and am working on how to do that financially.
Last year, a socio-political situation resulted in Sam having to quickly leave his job in another state. Big Boss brought Sam, who was working in the team next to mine, to our site. Then, when my manager took a different position late last year, Sam applied for his role. Big Boss splits the management role into two positions, promoting Sam and one of Sam’s co-workers from the special project (“Clarissa”) to this position.
Initially, when I was working on my old team with someone Sam managed, I reported to Clarissa. This soon leaked into our personal lives, and I was put in the uncomfortable position of supporting Sam and supporting coworkers when conflicts arose. When this happened, I spoke to the management teams involved about how this structure was not working and asked to transition directly to an open position on Clarissa’s team. This was facilitated enthusiastically by Clarissa and strangely reluctantly by Big Boss.
The work in this team is more challenging and it is taking a toll on my mental health. However, I enjoy working with Clarissa as a manager and as a human being. I would like to open up to them about some of the ways that my relationships, finances, and current life situation are affecting my overall health and ability to land clients. However, given her friendship with Sam and the already weak boundaries within our area, I am concerned about how to proceed with this conversation. I don’t want it to feel like I’m badmouthing his friend and co-worker. Additionally, my relationship struggles are relevant to my work performance. Do you have any advice about how to talk to coworkers about conflict in your marriage when your spouse is your coworker?
In this situation, you can’t really talk to your coworkers about what’s going on in your marriage when your spouse is also a coworker. You just… can’t. (This would be different if Sam were misbehaving; then you would need to talk to your employer about safeguards.)
I guess the question is: if you can Talk to Clarissa about this, what would you like her to do with that information? If there’s something specific she can do, like taking over a special meeting with Sam so you don’t have to or any other concrete action that would help, just ask her specifically for it. If you need some favors because it’s a challenging time in your personal life, you can ask for that (while being vague about what the challenges are). But it should be something specific and actionable, not just background information. Plus, as your boss, she doesn’t really need information about your relationship, finances, and living situation (and may feel uncomfortable doing so); She needs information about what you need from her, and you should focus on this, without getting into personal details.
There Are There are situations where you might share more with the boss, but (a) it’s more of a bonus in the boss/employee relationship, not the default, and (b) when you work with a partner, you necessarily give up some of that. I’m sorry because it sounds hard!
2. I had to lose sick days when I was hired
When I was first hired at my job, I was given vacation and 10 sick days. My appointment letter mentioned 10 sick days, as did all subsequent letters (we get new appointment letters when we get increments). The employee handbook, although not revised in several years, also states 10 sick days.
I have asked for more holidays in my annual reviews and I was refused because everyone should have the same number of holiday days, otherwise it is not fair.
It has come to light that recently appointed employees are getting only five sick days. I asked my supervisor to confirm how many days my supervisor would get, and he said he should only get five days. I told them full time employees get 10 days, and I was hired for 10 days and it is in the employee handbook. He said that the handbook is outdated and now everyone should get only five. And at the end of this calendar year he’s going to redo everyone’s vacation and sick days to make sure everyone gets the same things.
Looks like I’m about to go to the dock for five sick days! My last letter confirming my 10 sick days was last year! (And I’m pretty sure he’s taking more than five sick days himself, though I guess that’s not really relevant.)
It’s a small non-profit and I’m quite senior. I believe it is very short-sighted to reduce people’s sick days because it doesn’t cost the organization anything, it doesn’t grow, and not everyone uses them, but when you really need them, you really need them! Many employees have children and elderly parents; Five days is not enough. It’s a way of being kind and helpful, and ruining some people’s day will really demoralize. How would you suggest I approach this?
Make a case for keeping 10 sick days and increasing the allotment for recently hired employees. You said you are quite senior, so you have standing to advocate for it. Explain that this will be a significant cut into your and other employees’ profits and is likely to harm morale, and people will get sick at work and make others sick, hurting everyone’s productivity. You can also state that there are five sick days well below the national averageAnd that nonprofits generally try to compensate for below-average salaries by keeping benefits good or at least competitive.
And I don’t know what your manager’s role is, but if he’s not the one making the decisions on this, talk to that person – and consider pushing back against that person as well to other senior level employees.
3. What can HR offer employees when a manager is no good?
How do you deal with situations in HR where an employee’s concerns about their manager are valid from a relational perspective, but not actionable from a policy perspective?
Sometimes the honest reality is…their manager isn’t great.
We currently share resources such as mediation, how to respond to disciplinary actions and provide advice on how to escalate through their management chain, but employees still feel trapped. What else can HR really offer?
If your company is set up to support this, you can offer coaching and training for the manager, who can point out issues you see as patterns in their team. If your company Not there. Set up to support it, you can advocate for it, or at least try to do some less formal coaching of managers. You should also flag any patterns of problems with the manager to the person who manages them.
Sometimes, HR may be well positioned to act as a kind of interpreter – “It sounds like when your manager said X, what he was getting at was Y” and “What if you looked at it like X?” etc. But ultimately, when managers aren’t good at management, it’s in the company’s best interest to make them better at it, which means they need coaching and training and sometimes intervention from above.
4. Should I tell my boss about the employee who is claiming overtime even though he doesn’t work?
I usually make the mistake of not reporting things about coworkers unless it impacts me or potentially harms others. However, I’m in a weird place. I report to the director, but previously reported to the manager. Although I no longer manage anyone, I am considered part of the leadership team, and the manager and I have a good relationship. She also reports to the director.
We have a non-exempt employee who routinely comes in at least an hour early and gets work done, even if there isn’t actually any work for that role at that time. She reports to the manager, who says no one has challenged the overtime, so she is not intervening. We have four people in the same position who do not get this overtime and come on time to serve the customers.
It’s weird because I do metrics, audits, SOPs, training, etc. – nothing client-facing. And I report to the manager’s boss, who I think will not be happy with this situation. On the other hand, I have noted this to the manager and he has decided to do nothing. I’m hesitant to bring it up to my director, but I also know that if it comes up later and it’s a problem he’ll know I was aware of it. If I talked to the director, she would talk to the manager, who would almost certainly know I was the person. So – keep quiet (keep an eye on my own paper) or talk to my boss, who is also the manager’s boss, so he can work with the manager on the right solution?
Share it discreetly with your boss. This is actually pretty obvious because it affects you: You said that if it came up later your director would know you knew about it. I would have the same advice for anyone in your position, but especially as someone involved in auditing, you have additional expectations that you don’t look away when someone is, literally, stealing from the company and their manager has decided not to intervene.
When you talk to your boss, say that you would like to avoid creating tension in your relationship with the manager if he has some way to “discover” for himself what is going on.
5. Listing an Acquisition on My Resume
I got my first job after graduation (thanks to the resume and interview tips on your site!) and three months after I started, my company was acquired by a larger firm.
I’m not planning on leaving anytime soon and I doubt they’ll let me go with our spring and summer busy season, but when I decided to leave, how did I put this on my resume without it looking like I left the job after less than a quarter of a year?
This will remain a single task in your resume, not divided into two separate lists. Do it like this:
taco quality tester
Tacos Inc. (formerly Taco Utopia), October 2025 – November 2027
