It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go…
1. My coworker put up a Rising Sun flag
I have a coworker, Peggy, who likes to decorate her cubicle with kitchy knick-knacks she finds in antique stores. She recently pinned a flag inside hers for aesthetic purposes that I’m afraid will cause problems. For context, we are both white Latinas.
She pinned up a two-foot-by-three-foot Japanese Rising Sun flag that she found at an estate sale because she said it “looks really karate.” For those unaware, the Rising Sun flag was the flag of the Japanese Empire’s army during WWII, and from what I’ve read, the people who live in or are from the countries once occupied by Japan (China, Korea, Vietnam, etc.) see this flag the same way that we in the West see the Nazi flag.
This would’ve been just an embarrassing faux pas without much to worry about if it weren’t for the fact that our cubicles are by the shop floor, where many workers are immigrants from Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Shop floor workers walk by our cubicles all the time, so the flag would be visible. I don’t want to speak in someone else’s place, but I don’t think anyone wants to see a reminder of the war crimes their family suffered through in their own workplace.
I told Peggy that this might be a problem and why, but she insists on keeping the flag up because it looks cool. Her argument is, “I don’t actually support anything they’ve done, and I didn’t even know what the flag meant when I bought it. People at the office know I’m a nice person anyway, so they should know that I wouldn’t actually support stuff like that.”
Peggy’s family is Cuban, so I asked her how would she feel if someone put up a Che Guevara poster in their cubicle. She said that she wouldn’t think it’s a big deal. I asked if she’d ever take a Nazi flag to a synagogue, but she said this wasn’t comparable since only a hateful person would do something like that, and she wasn’t trying to be hateful to anyone. We kept going around in circles, but I finished by telling her that I was just warning her in case she got any other reactions. Is there anything else I should do? Did I do enough of my due diligence, or was speaking up unnecessary?
Speaking up was reasonable, but I would let it go now. You’ve brought it to her attention, she’s decided she doesn’t care, and if there are repercussions to that, she’ll have to deal with them.
For the record, “people know I’m a nice person so it won’t be a problem” is … not how it works. If a symbol is offensive or upsetting to someone, her being a nice person won’t change that. (There’s also the question of how nice someone really is if they’re using an upsetting symbol because they like the aesthetics of it…)
But you’ve already given her the information, and you can leave it there.
2. Should I tell our lawyer about his disorganized paralegal?
My husband, Carl, is the client in a very contentious custody dispute, and we’ve hired a lawyer to represent him. Carl can’t take calls during the workday. I’m the one who can. We’ve told the firm this repeatedly, and I’m listed as a contact.
Last Thursday at 1 pm, I found out the paralegal, Agnes, had supposedly been trying to reach Carl for “weeks,” and that we needed to get exhibits for the separate contempt charges to them by 8 am Friday. Carl had no missed calls or emails from the firm before that Thursday. I left work early to get everything together, which isn’t a great look when you’re three weeks into a new job.
While I was at it, I asked for a list of any other upcoming deadlines so we’d never be in this spot again. On Friday, about half an hour before the office closed, I called to confirm they’d received the materials and to ask when I’d get that list. Agnes told me she’d already responded. Turns out our attorney had replied on an email chain, and she’d answered him with the info I needed but never sent it to me. While forwarding it, she also accidentally sent me an unrelated email chain with another client that looked private. I deleted it as soon as I realized and didn’t read further.
The lawyer’s email on that chain asked Agnes to “remind us” how much she’d tried to contact Carl. I’m worried he now thinks we’ve been unresponsive, when in reality Carl had no missed calls or emails before that Thursday, and I’ve been available during office hours the whole time.
I’m irritated, but I don’t want Agnes to get in trouble. I just want her to be more organized, and I don’t want the lawyer to think we’re dropping the ball in a case where the stakes are this high. How do I raise this? Should I go to Agnes, the lawyer, or both? And do I mention the misdirected email?
You’re the client (well, your husband is, but you’re acting on his behalf) and you have very solid standing to say, essentially, “Hey, the communication here is breaking down — can we fix this?” It’s beyond reasonable to talk to the lawyer and say, “We’re having some trouble with our communications with Agnes — I’m not sure what’s going wrong but she said she’s tried to reach Carl for weeks when he had no missed calls or emails from her, and I’ve been available the whole time and encouraged her to contact me since I can take calls during the day while he can’t. So I just want to reiterate to both you and Agnes, please use me as the contact; I’m very available and responsive and I will make sure you get immediate replies. This case is the highest priority for both of us, and you shouldn’t encounter any delays on our end.”
I wouldn’t get into the misdirected email. It’s true that it’s further evidence of Agnes seeming scattered, but focus on the piece directly related to you: you’re not hearing from her, and you want to.
None of this is about getting Agnes in trouble. This is business, and you’re just identifying some communication problems in a high-stakes situation and clarifying what will fix them.
3. Why are companies secretive when people leave?
I’m writing to ask about a corporate practice that leaves many of us feeling unsettled and demoralized: why do companies handle layoffs and eliminated positions with near-total silence?
At my workplace, it feels like people who have dedicated years — sometimes decades — of their lives to the company simply vanish overnight. One day they are at their desks, and the next, their email bounces. Leadership rarely addresses what happened, leaving remaining employees to piece together rumors. It creates a chilling atmosphere where loyal staff feel disposable, as if anyone could be erased without a word.
Why do companies choose this “ghost town” approach instead of humane, transparent communication? How does leadership justify the psychological toll this takes on the team left behind, and is there any way for employees to advocate for a more respectful off-boarding culture?
Yes, this is extremely weird and surprisingly common. Not everywhere operates like this, but enough do that your workplace isn’t as much of an outlier as it should be.
It’s enormously inefficient, because it means that people don’t know Jane is no longer working on the task she said she’d handle for them yesterday, and there’s no centralized announcement of who’s gone and what it means for projects other people might have a stake in.
When it happens, it’s usually a badly thought-out attempt to control the message. If it’s layoffs, they don’t want the company to look unstable. If it’s a firing or a resignation, they want to minimize drama, or they don’t want people to think they have high turnover, or they don’t want people speculating on what happened. Of course, this results in the exact opposite, where rumors swirl and people do speculate on what happened.
As for whether you can do anything, you can try! You and your coworkers (and ideally your managers too) could point out the inefficiencies it creates when you don’t know how or if work is being transitioned, and that unexplained departures are creating uncertainty and rumors. Be explicit that you’re not asking to be told the reasons for a departure, but you want the departure acknowledged (and ideally the person’s contributions recognized, when they’re leaving on good terms) and clear information about who is taking over the person’s responsibilities.
4. Overtime confusion when the laws in my state are different than my employer’s state
I am located in midwestern state X as a non-exempt remote employee of an org based in state Y. My home state, state X, has a fairly standard definition of overtime, which kicks in once you’ve worked over 40 hours in a week. State Y, where my employer is based, has a more stringent definition of overtime and it kicks in for any hours worked past eight in a day. I should note that I am a recent employee (I started last week) and I have never held a remote job before, let alone for an employer located in a different state.
There seems to be confusion on my employer’s end about which state laws apply to me. My understanding was that I am covered by the laws governing the state I live in, so the more stringent definition of overtime would not apply to me. My manager at first said that actually, regardless of location, the org needed to apply the more stringent version of the law whenever there was a discrepancy. A day or so later, he followed up with a message to clarify their make-up time policy, which covers making up hours that the employee wants to take off unpaid (because they don’t have enough PTO to cover). He said if I wanted to take time off and did not have enough PTO, I could make up that time as long as it fell in the same week (so that overtime did not kick in) but if, for example, I worked a six-hour day on Thursday and a 10-hour day on Friday (total of 16 hours over two days), I needed to report that on my time card as two eight-hour days to avoid going into overtime on Friday.
Is going into overtime even a concern here, given that the state I live in is not governed by the more stringent law?
And maybe more pressing, given that they assume the more stringent law does apply to me, is it illegal to tell someone to lie on their time card to avoid overtime? At my last org, we had a similar flex time policy, but since we didn’t have the eight-hour overtime consideration there was no need for anyone to lie; we just accurately reported our time and as long as it didn’t go over 40 hours a week, there was no problem. And it it’s a problem, what do I do about it, given that I have worked here for about a week? I should emphasize that outside of this, I have really loved this org.
Your employer is allowed to have stricter policies than what the law requires of them. If they want to pay overtime for any hours over eight worked in a day — even though you’re not in a state that requires it — they can do that. And they may be doing it because it’s easier to apply the same policies to everyone, rather than to track a bunch of different policies for people in different locations. “We’re just going to apply the strictest of the state laws to everyone” isn’t an uncommon way to minimize that administrative burden.
If you did live in their state, then they couldn’t legally tell you to modify your timecard in the way they did (they’d be instructing you to circumvent the law and denying you overtime pay you were legally entitled to). But you don’t live in that state, so they can manage your time reporting this way if they want to. The law doesn’t care about the accuracy of your time cards; it only carries that you’re paid properly for all hours you worked. It sounds like your manager is saying, “Hey, we apply this stricter law to everyone, but here’s a way to flex your time that’s actually legal in your state and will work for our processes.”
So there’s nothing you need to do about it. It’s legal and fine in your state.
The post my coworker put up a Rising Sun flag, should I tell our lawyer about his disorganized paralegal, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.
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