how do I adjust to having a good boss, needing a doctor’s note for the first day of sick leave, and more

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

1. How do I adjust to finally having a good boss?

I have a great problem: my boss and colleagues are lovely people who seem invested in making sure I feel happy and supported in my new job. Hooray! They have been careful not to overwhelm me while still helping me learn, my colleagues are happy to mentor me and answer my questions, and my boss is supportive, helpful, regularly checks in, and seems genuinely interested in how I’m doing. I’m told I’m doing great and they’re glad I’m here. I’m glad I’m here, too!

Unfortunately, I’ve only worked in places where my bosses were indifferent at best and toxic drama-mongers at worst and my coworkers and I were left to flounder and figure things out on our own. No feedback was the norm, and “stopping by” or “checking in” usually preceded my bosses giving me bad news. My coworkers were awesome (except when they weren’t and I was left to clean up their messes) but hamstrung by the same issues I was, so I didn’t get much mentorship. Feeling supported is weird and new and mildly distressing because I don’t know how to respond.

How do you deal with a good boss and supportive coworkers? How are you supposed to handle meetings to “check in” when your boss probably isn’t going to tell you they’re removing key resources and supports from your position but also expect you to keep performing at the same level? How do you respond to positive feedback? How do you thank people for taking the time to mentor and encourage you without being weirdly over-grateful? What do you do when people genuinely want to help you succeed?

I’m glad to have guidance and structure in a workplace that so far seems remarkably functional, but I don’t know what to do with it all!

It will start to feel more normal in time. Meanwhile —

* When you get positive feedback: “Thank you.” Or, “Thank you, I enjoyed doing it” or “Thank you, I learned a lot doing it” or “Thank you, I’m glad it was what you were looking for.” More here.

* Thanking people for taking the time to mentor you: “Thanks so much for your advice — you’ve been so helpful.” Or, “Thanks so much for talking all this through with me; I really appreciate having your thoughts.” Or more big-picture: “You’ve been incredibly helpful as I’ve gotten settled, and I’m really grateful!” Don’t keep repeating this over and over; once per conversation is fine, but more than that would be too much.

* Check-in meetings: It’s normal to get nervous when you’ve previously had bad experiences with these. Make a point of focusing on what you know about this manager and this workplace: what have you seen about how they operate and how these meetings usually go? Continually walking yourself through that thought process will help you start to recalibrate your norms.

More here:

are you haunted by your last bad job?
should I tell my boss about my anxieties from past dysfunctional jobs?

2. How do I say, “Please don’t message me”?

I’m a manager working in a very large accountancy firm. We use Microsoft Teams a lot for messaging, in addition to email.

Most of my work is reviewing complex computations and it requires me to be distraction-free. Frequent Teams messages are disruptive, but the main issue is that I cannot seem to stop opening messages and forgetting all about them.

Sometimes these messages are from junior staff who will stop working on a task if they don’t get a response, as the decision is critical to the next part of their work. Sometimes it’s from senior staff or partners, and it’s probably not ideal for my career to be regularly ignoring their requests.

Other than this Teams issue, I’m known for being notably well organized.

Can I set my Teams status to “Please send me an email instead”? How about “Email is my preferred method of communication and is more likely to result in a response”? What about “For the love of god, don’t message me”?

I’d go with something like: “Deep-focus mode — please email, not message here.”

If junior staff ignore that, you can talk to them about needing to stop. If senior staff ignore it, your best solution might be that after you open their Teams message, you resolve to immediately email yourself a reminder like “check Jane’s Teams message” so that something is in your email that you’ll see.

3. Required to get a doctor’s note on first day of sick leave

I have a question about this item from an article on changes in German sick leave laws: “Mr. Merz also announced sweeping changes to sick leave rules, including scrapping the right for Germans to get a sick note by telephone and introducing a requirement for workers to ‘submit a medical certificate from the very first day of illness.’”

What sort of lunacy is this, “Bring your whole Covid case to work?”

I feel like I have my hands full with the lunacy that is the U.S. workplace, but yeah, that’s absurd. The very first day of illness? So if you have a cold or a virus that’s going to pass on its own and only requires rest and Tylenol, you have to drag yourself to the doctor on day one if you want to use sick leave?

What a way to waste medical resources and keep people from getting the actual rest they need to get better.

4. How to say goodbye to a job I don’t love but a team I do?

I’m very lucky to have recently been successful at interview for my dream job.

I work with a very close-knit team and am the only person in my role — we had a team of three last year, but retirement and slow recruitment has meant I’ve been doing almost all of the work virtually singlehandedly since February, including some complex things that had previously sat with my supervisor at a higher salary rate. Despite the workload increase, my own salary has not been reviewed. I’ve had some short term, part-time, temporary support which was much appreciated, and significant manager churn (four within three months, sadly not unusual in this industry) which was not. I’ve had to go through a formal grievance process to have these challenges recognized and there are still actions outstanding for my managers.

My colleagues in other roles in the team have been very supportive and, for the most part, appreciate the impact this has had on me. Unfortunately, due to organizational structure, they can’t affect much about my role. I feel terrible that I’m now planning to leave. I haven’t handed in my notice yet as pre-employment checks are still ongoing, but I’ve worked for the new organization before and don’t expect any issues.

Do you have any advice for softening the blow when it comes, and how to be explicit that this is not a direct result of the grievance? I’m excited about the new opportunity but equally feel guilty that I was the last person standing and am now jumping ship too.

You don’t really need to soften the blow, and you don’t need to feel terrible! This is business and people leave jobs, including at inconvenient times. In fact, if it hasn’t crossed any of those colleagues’ minds that you might be job-searching given the situation, I’d be surprised.

All you need to say is, “I’ve gotten a great job offer that I’m really excited about, so my last day will be (date) and I’ll miss working with you.” If anyone asks whether you quit specifically because of the issues you’ve been dealing with, you can say anything from “I won’t pretend it’s been easy in my role recently” to “No, just really excited about the new position.”

Related:
I feel guilty about resigning when a bunch of my coworkers recently left

5. I was told we work one Saturday a year — but now they want me to work one Saturday a month

When I interviewed, I was told that the company only worked one Saturday in a year. When I started the job, I found out that there was a required Saturday work day once a month, and additional Saturdays when production was not met. How do I talk to my boss about how I felt deceived and they were not truthful in the interview, and that I may not be able to work every Saturday they asked me to work because it is done at the last minute?

“When I interviewed, I was told that I’d only work one Saturday per year, and I accepted the job based on that understanding. This is a significant difference — how did it end up so different from what we discussed?”

And: “I’m not always available to work at the last minute on Saturdays because of existing commitments. Given that, how should we proceed?”

However, it’s possible you’ll hear that they don’t know why you were told something else in the interview and this is in fact the requirement. If that’s the case, you can try negotiating a different arrangement (again, stressing that it’s not what you’d agreed to), but if they won’t budge, at that point you’d need to decide how much capital you’re willing to use on it and, possibly, whether you’re willing to stay in the job under those terms or would rather leave it.