Posted by Ask a Manager

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/10/boss-secretly-arranged-for-me-not-to-get-paid-exec-accidentally-sent-a-message-criticizing-me-to-the-whole-staff-and-more.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=33772

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

1. My boss secretly arranged for me not to get paid for committee work

I recently volunteered to serve on a committee at work. The group meets once a week during lunch and hosts weekend activities five times a year. Members who serve on the committee receive a stipend of $1,500 per year. Obviously this doesn’t amount to much when spaced out over a year’s paychecks, but I appreciate the nod to the extra work we do.

When I got my first check after I began serving on the committee, I noticed the stipend hadn’t been added. I thought it was probably just an oversight and mentioned to my supervisor that I’d be running over to HR to clear it up. She acted strangely and then said she didn’t think the role called for a stipend. I was taken aback and told her it’s the norm and everyone else on the committee gets one. She said she thinks stipends should be reserved for work done outside of work hours and since most of my committee duties were during lunchtime, it shouldn’t result in extra pay. We definitely have a culture of eating lunch at our desks while working, but I told her these are additional duties on top of my regular work and pointed out that my productivity has not dropped. She then said that I volunteered for the committee because I have fun doing the tasks they perform (it’s true; I did) and so I should not expect money. She eventually admitted that she had spoken with the committee head and told them my role doesn’t qualify me for a stipend, which is why I hadn’t received it.

I’m the only person in my department serving on any of the committees. I can’t think of anything about my role that would disqualify me from receiving my stipend besides my supervisor just not agreeing with it. It doesn’t come from her budget. My productivity has remained the same; I just don’t do my regular job during lunch one day a week.

What would you do? Fight for the stipend? Let it go because it isn’t much money? I have my eyes open for other opportunities but I work in a niche field so it’s unlikely I’ll find anything any time soon.

What?! This is bananas. She went out of her way to prevent you from receiving the same stipend as everyone else on the committee, even though it doesn’t affect her or her budget at all? Just … on principle? And also didn’t bother to mention it to you until you brought it up, and even then she didn’t come clean about it immediately?

What is your boss like aside from this? I’m skeptical that this is the only highly problematic thing she has done or is likely to do.

In any case, go to whoever runs the committee and say you just learned what your boss said but you’d like to receive the same stipend everyone else receives for doing the same work, and you hadn’t consented to having it dropped for you. You should also considering flagging to HR that your boss did this, because I doubt they’ll love it.

2. An exec accidentally sent a message criticizing me to the whole staff

An executive at our company who works in a different location sent a chat message that was intended for my supervisor to the channel that has everyone (about 40 employees). The message was derogatory about my work, but I have never received a performance review or anything indicating that my performance is less than satisfactory. He deleted the message and then sent only me a direct message with an apology.

I’m having a hard time getting over this. I’m embarrassed and wonder if the message reflected his true feelings about my work. Any advice on how to move on from this?

Take it as useful insider knowledge you wouldn’t normally have. He apparently has concerns about your work; now you know, and there’s value in that, mortifying as the experience was. Ideally you’d go back to him and say, “I realize that message wasn’t intended for me, but knowing that you have concerns about XYZ, I’m hoping we can talk about what I can do differently so that you’re happier with my work.” Or if that’s entirely unrealistic given the relationships and politics of your office, say something similar to your direct manager.

It’s out there now, he knows it’s out there, and you might as well address whatever’s behind it.

3. Does caregiving belong on a resume?

My husband has a slowly degenerating disability, and I am his primary caregiver when he’s unable to do something himself. At the end of last year, we decided that his care was cutting into my working hours so much that I was unable to provide my employer 40 hours of quality work as well as take care of my husband. In a better world, Medicare or other health insurance would pay me to care for him, but because I’m his spouse there’s a higher risk of fraud, and Medicare won’t pay a spouse for providing care, so here we are.

I’ve been doing off-and-on freelance web design work for folks in my network. I’m looking for opportunities to work part-time so I’m cleaning up my resume. My friend says that “caregiver” should be listed under my Employment, along with my freelance gigs. I feel like a) everyone’s a caregiver at some level (even if it’s for themselves) so there’s no strong argument to list it when it’s the unpaid work with comes with being a life partner and b) I’m not sure I want to advertise to potential clients / employers that health and disability issues could arise if I haven’t even met them yet. I do have the freelance work that I’m doing listed, so there’s no “gap” in my resume. Is that enough?

Ignore your friend. Your instincts are right that caregiving for a family member shouldn’t go on a resume.

I suspect your friend is coming at this from the angle of “it’s important, valuable work, and it’s something you’re spending a lot of time on” — which is true! But as a general rule, work that you do for your family or household doesn’t go on your resume. Partly that’s because you’re not held accountable in the same way as you would be at a paying job, and an employer doesn’t have a way of inquiring into your performance in the way they could with other jobs. Partly it’s also because so many people do work in that same category just as part of life (even if you’re doing more complex, demanding versions of it).

It especially doesn’t make sense in your situation because you have outside work to list for this time period! It would only make sense to add the caregiving work if it were somehow going to strengthen your resume, which is unlikely 99% of the time.

Related:
can I put running my household on my resume?

4. Should I go to a cross-country training immediately after starting a new job?

I recently got hired for a new role which I’m very excited about, but which I don’t start for another two weeks. Today, my new boss emailed me about a training opportunity, which would be four days after I got hired, and which would send me to a city on the other side of the country for most of my second week (this isn’t new hire-type training, but rather skills-building.) She said that it was up to me if I wanted to go since she knew it wasn’t ideal timing, but also said it would be a good learning opportunity.

I’m trying to decide if I should go to the training. (My new job would pay for it, so that’s not a consideration.) On the pro side, I think it might be a great way to build skills. On the con side, this is a job which is fairly new to me, and which I think will be a challenge — one I think I will rise to, but which I want to have a strong start in. Even on the less work related side, there are pros and cons; the training is in a city where I have friends and family, but I will have just moved cross-country and don’t like flying. Should I go?

All else being equal, I vote go! Your new manager is suggesting it so she clearly thinks it’s worth the trade-offs. Unless you have a really strong reason for not wanting to, I’d go.

But if you really don’t want to, you can just say you have some kind of scheduling conflict with the dates; it sounds like that would be fine too.

5. How do you pronounce FMLA?

I’m aware this is a very low-stakes question. How do people read the abbreviation “FMLA” when they see it written down?

As an international reader, I have only heard of it via your blog, and a quick Google search suggests that people in the USA pronounce each letter individually. When I read it written down, I pronounce it in my head as “fem-la”, although I realized the other day that other people could equally feel the natural way to read it is famla, fimla, fomla, fumla … what do you think?

It’s pronounced as each individual letter: F, M, L, A. Each letter is said on its own; they don’t all run together into a new word.

The post boss secretly arranged for me not to get paid, exec accidentally sent a message criticizing me to the whole staff, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/10/boss-secretly-arranged-for-me-not-to-get-paid-exec-accidentally-sent-a-message-criticizing-me-to-the-whole-staff-and-more.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=33772

Posted by Ask a Manager

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/10/my-boss-says-people-who-work-from-home-shouldnt-take-sick-days.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=33703

A reader writes:

I was recently out to lunch with my manager and a client we’ve worked with for many years. We were talking about how the shift to WFH has changed the way we approach certain parts of our job and how we feel our companies get more work out of us than ever before because we aren’t chatting with folks in the office/going out to lunch/etc. nearly as much – all standard conversation these days.

Then my manager (with whom I generally have a good relationship) said something that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about: “I don’t believe that people who work from home should take sick days.” I was honestly flummoxed! I sputtered something about illnesses like migraines or Covid that could certainly prevent someone from working, and managed to say pretty calmly that I disagreed with his position and that we work in a historically lower-paying industry where sick days are part of the not-great compensation we’re entitled to.

But since then, it’s colored a lot of my interactions with him. I’ve wanted to say that I think his opinion is damaging and comes from an extremely privileged, able-bodied perspective (he is one of those people who never seems to get sick, only needs to sleep a few hours a night, has boundless energy, etc.). He also mentions frequently that he has not taken a real vacation in years, so in some ways he seems to view not taking time off overall as a point of pride (though he is supportive of other folks taking time off for vacation or to take care of family/personal matters).

Part of me feels like I owe it to my broader team to address this, and I’ve thought about sending him some articles about why taking sick days is helpful for avoiding burnout, etc. The other part of me feels like it’s probably a losing battle and the better option is to keep being supportive of my team taking time off and being vocally supportive of sick time in group settings so he doesn’t have the opportunity to get defensive.

He knows that I have a couple of chronic conditions, and he still felt comfortable saying this in front of me and in front of a client (!) so I’m torn about whether he’d be receptive, although I know I’m going to be thinking about this every time I consider taking a sick day now. He also manages a couple of fairly junior employees and, while I doubt he’s said this to them, it concerns me that it’s his position.

Is this worth pushing back on again, and how can I approach it in a way that doesn’t just sound like me saying “you’re wrong,” which is bound to make him defensive? For what it’s worth, I am a high-performing member of my team, and I know he values my input on work-related matters. I have worked with him for over a decade so I have some capital I could expend.

Have you seen evidence that he acts on this belief at work in any way? If you haven’t — if he’s never pushed back against or seemed disapproving of people taking sick days — it’s possible he just blurted out something dumb that he doesn’t actually think, or that at least doesn’t affect the way he manages in any meaningful way. Or even that he just hadn’t thought it through — like he was thinking about someone home with a cold who could comfortably work through their sniffles, and not considering an illness where that wouldn’t be wise or possible.

If he’s not acting in ways that seem to judge or penalize real-life teammates for taking sick days, then your plan of just continuing to be vocally supportive of sick time is a reasonable way to go.

But it’s also okay to speak up if you want to! You could say to him, “That comment you made at lunch the other day really stuck with me, about how people shouldn’t take sick days if they work from home. It’s true that if someone’s only reason for not working is because they’re contagious, remote work takes care of that. But other times people too sick to work — like with a bad flu, or Covid, or groggy from pain-killers — and they need to rest, not work. I want my team to take sick days when they need them.” (Note: you are not putting on the table the question of whether you should be doing something differently. That’s not up for discussion. To the extent that there’s a question here, it’s: do you really think that?)

This is different from the argument you made on the spot (that sick days are part of people’s already-low compensation) and I suspect it’s more likely to get him to backtrack or to admit he spoke flippantly / hadn’t thought through what he was really saying.

The post my boss says people who work from home shouldn’t take sick days appeared first on Ask a Manager.

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/10/my-boss-says-people-who-work-from-home-shouldnt-take-sick-days.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=33703