Posted by Ask a Manager

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/08/im-covering-2-full-time-jobs-and-my-boss-wont-help.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=32850

A reader writes:

I need help navigating a work situation that has left me burned out, frustrated, and, frankly, a little desperate. I work for a small business, and my boss, Natalie (the owner), has put me in a position where I am essentially working two full-time jobs, with only a $1/hour raise to show for it.

I was originally hired as the office manager, a position that was described as fast-paced with no downtime. That was absolutely true. But early on, because I was finishing my marketing degree, Natalie started giving me small marketing-related tasks, which I was happy to help with. When I graduated, I continued assisting with marketing on the side while we had an external marketing contractor, Amy, handling the more complex tasks like paid advertising.

After a while, Natalie told me she wanted to stop working with Amy and have me take over marketing full-time. I was thrilled. She said she’d hire a new office manager and, in the meantime, we’d “do our best” to juggle everything. I made it clear that I couldn’t fully transition into marketing until we hired a replacement, but I’d do my best to balance things for a few weeks. That was five months ago.

Natalie has dragged her feet on hiring. She’s slow to post ads and takes weeks to follow up with candidates and, by the time she gets around to checking references, good candidates have already accepted other jobs. Meanwhile, my workload has doubled. Marketing responsibilities have continued piling on while I’m still fully responsible for office management, and it’s become impossible to keep up.

I’ve communicated – professionally, repeatedly, and increasingly urgently – that this situation isn’t sustainable. I’ve told her it’s affecting my mental health. I’ve pointed out that it’s hurting the company, too, because when I prioritize one role, the other inevitably suffers. If I focus on marketing, she gets frustrated that the storefront is messy or orders haven’t been shipped. If I focus on operations, she’s irritated that I haven’t finished designing a webpage or running an ad. She acknowledges the problem (even joking about my unfinished tasks), but then just keeps piling more work on me.

Her own business advisor has said multiple times that hiring an office manager should be the top priority. Other employees agree. But nothing changes.

To make things worse, she constantly oversteps boundaries. She texts and calls me at all hours. She put in the handbook that we’d have a recent holiday off but then decided the day before that we’d be open, so I had to cancel my plans and come in. After that, she tried to pressure me into running personal errands for her off the clock (which I refused).

I know the obvious answer is to leave, and trust me, I would if I could. But this is literally the only marketing job in driving distance of my tiny town, and I need the experience to land a remote role elsewhere. I do have a strong portfolio, but I keep getting rejected due to a lack of professional experience. In a year or two, I plan to move, but until then, I feel stuck.

What can I do to get her to finally hire my replacement? How do I set boundaries when she seems to completely disregard my time and well-being? And if there’s no fixing this, how do I survive in the meantime? I’m at my wit’s end.

You can read my answer to this letter at New York Magazine today. Head over there to read it.

The post I’m covering 2 full-time jobs and my boss won’t help appeared first on Ask a Manager.

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/08/im-covering-2-full-time-jobs-and-my-boss-wont-help.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=32850

Posted by Ask a Manager

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/08/my-boss-keeps-calling-me-his-assistant-im-not-coworkers-complain-constantly-about-our-in-office-days-and-more.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=32630

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

1. My boss keeps calling me his assistant (I’m not)

I am in a small department of two — myself and a director. My official title includes “specialist” but I will also use “[role] manager,” a promotion my boss agrees I’m overqualified for — maybe even deserving of assistant director. He, as well as his boss and pretty much everyone else I work with, know I’m very knowledgeable and talented and come to me for advice or projects regularly. He’s been my boss for about four years (I worked in this department for nine years before that, working up to my current role).

Even though I’m almost more qualified than he is, he will occasionally refer to me as his assistant when introducing me, as in “I’ve copied my assistant [name] on this email” or “I’m so-and-so, the director, and this is my assistant [name]” in person, even at professional conferences! It pretty much only happens with people we’re both meeting for the first time. While I do assist him in the technical sense of being below him in the hierarchy, I am not an assistant, nor his assistant. I think the inappropriate nature of that introduction is heightened by him being a man and me being a woman about 20 years younger than him, so more likely to be assumed to be an assistant.

The first few times it caught me off guard and I did nothing. Since then, I’ve tried just clarifying to the recipient — restating my name and real title in person while shaking their hand, and including my full signature with my job title by email. But I’m not sure at this point if there’s a way to bring it up to him without it being supremely awkward. It’s not like it just happened for the first time, but has been every so often over the years. For some context, he is a corporate classic, lightly misogynistic, older man, and generally oblivious to how he’s impacting those around him (including some of your other classic emails — humming or burping loudly at his desk, no poker face, thinking he’s whispering but everyone can hear him), stubborn and emotional in his ideas. But frankly I can deal just fine with all of that and I’m fine pushing back on ideas — it’s the assistant thing that rankles me more than anything.

Can you ask him to call you his deputy when introducing you? I suspect that’s what he means by it, and he’s not thinking about how his wording is misleading people about the nature of your role.

I’d say it this way: “I’ve noticed when you introduce me, you’ll sometimes call me your assistant — and you probably don’t realize this, but especially as a woman in this field that seems to prime people to misunderstand the work I’m doing. I think when you say that you mean something more like ‘deputy’ so I wondered if that would work instead? Or even just my title, if you’re comfortable with that.”

To be clear: this is not about assistants not being valuable. It’s about people misunderstanding your role against a backdrop of our long history of people automatically assuming women are support staff, regardless of their actual jobs.

2. My coworkers complain constantly about our in-office days

My company is finally following the trend and forcing a post-Covid return to the office on many employees. Personally I think they are being pretty reasonable and flexible with their new policy (still lots of WFH time). There are many people on our team, especially new hires, who need significant in-person time with experienced employees to learn our complex roles, and things have not been going well for the last couple of years for the new team members.

We’ve had an ultra-flexible “recommendation” in place up until now, which just resulted in most employees ignoring it and not going in at all. Our company gave a six-month notice period back in March, and by the end of this month everyone who is not officially classified as remote is expected to be in the office for a certain percentage of their work hours.

My main problem with this is not actually returning to the office. The problem is that the team I work with (I’m an IC, not a manager) has a horrible attitude about it and it makes going into the office miserable. Any in-office day, you’re sure to hear at least five people who will not stop complaining about how mad they are to be in the office, how they hate the new policy, etc. etc. I understand an annoyed comment here or there, but it’s like having the world’s most annoying podcast playing in the background for the whole day and it seems like everyone feeds off each other’s bad energy.

I’m not a manager and many of us have different managers, so I don’t really have a leg to stand on when it comes to addressing any behavioral issues, but these people are just miserable and make everyone else miserable when they’re around. (And honestly, some of the biggest complainers are the ones who need to be in the office the most…) Do you have any tips for making things better? I don’t think a firm “no complaining” stance would work as morale is already so low. I have quite a bit of sway with the team as I’ve been around a while and am well known.

Can you be honest with people? “Honestly, it’s so much worse when everyone keeps complaining about it and we’re all just making each other more miserable with the complaining. For my own peace of mind, I can’t keep talking about it.” Feel free to alternate that with: “It seems pretty reasonable to me, especially compared to what a lot of companies are doing, and I think it’ll help new hires.”

You won’t necessarily get through to everyone, but by giving an honest response, you might at least discourage them from venting around you quite as often.

3. I created something that saves a lot of time, but it might not be usable after I’m gone

I am skilled with a certain Microsoft Office product that’s included in most licenses but isn’t not one that people use very often. Using a program created within it is simple, but creating the program is not. I have learned how to make complex programs over the years of working with it. I used my knowledge to create a program for a work process that saves a lot of time and makes it much less prone to errors. It is a really good improvement.

I’m starting to wonder though — is it right for me to have created something that requires specialized knowledge to make future changes/improvements? While I’m not currently planning on leaving the company any time soon, I’m sure I will at some point. Over time the program will need tweaks, have errors, etc. and once I’m not around it will be much harder for them to address those.

You should talk to your boss about this! Lay out what you did here — you’ve created something using specialized knowledge that’s saving a lot of time, but it’s not necessarily something the team will be able to maintain/alter after you’re gone and so, knowing that, does she want you to do anything differently? There’s no one right answer here; it depends on lots of different factors, and is definitely a boss discussion.

4. Employer reluctantly moved start date out by three months … and now I have another better offer

My husband and I recently moved countries and were lucky to both secure employment in our new city. Unfortunately, we couldn’t secure summer childcare, and our son is far to young for a work-from-home-while-caring-for-toddler situation to be effective.

My husband brought the issue to his future employer, and they grudgingly agreed that he could move his start date by 12 weeks, which is the soonest a local daycare could fit us in. He’s deeply grateful to have the security of a job lined up while also getting to enjoy all of this quality time with our child.

At some point during the summer, a recruiter at a second company contacted him and invited him to interview. He made it through the process and has received a written offer. It’s for 33% more salary and the commute is half as long. He obviously will be accepting this offer. However, he feels bad about taking the other employer for a bit of a ride. Can you help us with a script for the most polite and professional way to say, “Sorry but it turns out you low-balled me big time and I found something way better”? For what it’s worth, he already tried negotiating with the first employer for a higher salary and they said this was the best they could do.

All he can do is to be polite and straightforward and acknowledge the inconvenience. I’d say it this way: “I really appreciate you being willing to work with me on the start date, and I’m sorry to be writing with some unwelcome news: while I was very much looking forward to joining you in September, an offer I wasn’t expecting fell in my lap and it’s not something I can pass up. I’m sorry I won’t be able to join you in the fall, and I wish you all the best in your work.”

5. Quitting my job while my manager is on vacation

I have been interviewing for a new job, and I think there’s a very good chance I’ll get it! I’ve had a lot of good signs and while I’m not certain yet, I feel pretty confident I may be changing jobs soon!

However, my manager is currently on two weeks of vacation in another country. I’m worried about potentially putting in my two weeks while she’s out. I really like my manager and coworkers, and would want to leave on good terms and with all my projects in a state where they can get easily picked up by someone else.

What’s the protocol in a situation like this, if I get this job while she’s out? Should I ask my potential new job for some extra time to make the transfer? Even if I don’t get the job, this would be useful advice to have for the future.

No, you wouldn’t normally need to ask the new employer for extra time (unless there were really unusual circumstances). Instead, you’ll give your resignation to your boss’s boss or to HR, and ask them how to handle the transition period while your boss is out. It’s true that your boss won’t be there to do some of the transition work they’d normally be covering, but that’s just how this stuff goes. You’re not expected to not accept a new job or to delay your resignation just because your boss is away.

That said, since you don’t have the offer yet and your manager’s two-week vacation is already in progress, there’s a good chance the timing will work out fine. Offers often take longer than people expect them to, and then you might ask for a few days to think it over, and she may be back or very close to the back by the time you’re ready to give notice anyway.

Related:
how do I give notice to my boss if they’re on vacation?

The post my boss keeps calling me his assistant (I’m not), coworkers complain constantly about our in-office days, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/08/my-boss-keeps-calling-me-his-assistant-im-not-coworkers-complain-constantly-about-our-in-office-days-and-more.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=32630