my boss wants to be at the hospital for my coworker’s surgery, taking vacation time when your team is understaffed, and more

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager .
It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. My boss wants to be at the hospital for my coworker’s surgery
My work has a habit of not being able to differentiate between work/life balance and sometimes even uses the phrase “ we’re like family .” It’s something I’m trying to change, but these thoughts are really ingrained in management.
We have one HR manager (Amanda) and a fairly small administrative group, which I am a part of. Amanda previously had two awful situations in their personal life: (1) Her sister died and she came in to work the same day because the only other person who knew how to run payroll was our boss and there was nervousness he wouldn’t be able to do payroll properly. (2) Her husband had to go in for emergency open-heart surgery and our boss went to the hospital and BROUGHT HER WORK because he thought “she would want something to do.” He sat there with her while she waited. Even thinking about it now makes my blood boil.
Horribly, Amanda just found out she has ovarian cancer and is having surgery next week to remove her reproductive organs and find out what her options are. It’s absolutely shocking and awful, and I feel terrible for her and her husband. The thing is, my boss told me yesterday he plans on being at the hospital during her surgery to be with her husband! They have become close and the husband also works at our company, but I can’t see how this is appropriate. I said so to him and it was received terribly. He said very angrily that I just don’t get it, they’re like family, he’s definitely going to be there, and that is that.
I talked to Amanda after her husband’s surgery and was told how bad it was that our boss was there and brought work for her to do, so I feel like I’m not out of line saying that his going is inappropriate. I don’t know what to do now. He’s an owner, her boss, and apparently feels like he is close enough with them to be at the hospital. What would you suggest? I’m just completely thrown off and upset, but maybe my emotions about her diagnosis are getting in the way?
What, no, this is horrible. You don’t show up for this sort of thing without being (a) extremely close and (b) invited. If your boss hadn’t shown up uninvited with work for Amanda during her husband’s surgery (!), we could maybe give him the benefit of the doubt that Amanda’s husband asked him to come (since they’re friends) … but given his track record of violating boundaries, it’s more likely that he’s just pushing his way into an extremely high-stress personal situation.
Anyway, can you tell Amanda and/or her husband ASAP about what your boss is planning? If they know in advance, they can tell him directly not to come, or ensure he doesn’t know where and when the surgery will be, or even ask the nurses to keep him out.
Related:
my manager shows up while I’m having chemotherapy to talk about work
2. My boss is pressuring me to be more “visible”
I am the head writer at a 50-person company. For the last six months, my boss Adam has been encouraging me to be “more of a strategic leader” and more “visible.” What this seems to translate to is talking about and presenting to anyone who will listen about how amazing our writing is and what is happening in the writing industry. Adam would love me to be speaking up about all things writing in company meetings, to clients and in public forums.
I don’t want to!
I am a writer who was promoted to lead the team a few years ago. I have never pretended to want to be a public speaker, a salesman, or a PR. I know how to write well for my job, but I do not have a lot of wider industry knowledge to be able to speak as an expert.
Last year, I was off work for two months due to depression. The stress of a heavy workload was a catalyst for my ill health, and it then took many months to recover and feel like myself again. My boss was extremely understanding and continues to be mindful of my mental health and workload. I am now quieter overall and more keen to stay within my comfort zone. Some years ago in another job, I used to regularly present to 100+ people on a stage — I was good at it, but it was stressful. I would not want to return to public speaking (or increased “visibility”) in good health, let alone on the other side of this.
Now, today, my Big Boss Eve has said there is the opportunity to do a high-profile industry talk and it would be “soooo good” for me. Eve is aware of my mental health episode and has been sympathetic. How do I say no? I just want to play to my recognized strengths as a writer and manager. Help!
A lot of times managers assume you’ll be delighted to take on stuff like this, but will stop pushing it if you explain that you’re not . Not always, of course — sometimes the role really has changed in a way where the new responsibilities are now part of it, but if that’s the case it’s better to bring that into the open you can both figure out what to do about it. (In your case, I’m guessing it’s probably more the former than the latter, but who knows.)
Talk to Adam and say something like this: “You’ve mentioned a few times that you’d like me to talk about our work and present to clients and at meetings. While I’ve done that work in the past, it’s not an area I want to return to, especially given my health situation right now. I want to be up-front about that and find out if it will be a problem for this role.”
3. Is it okay to take a lot of vacation time when we’re understaffed?
In September 2021, I rejoined a company I previously worked at for nearly 10 years. Part of the negotiated agreement is that I am awarded the same vacation time as those with 10+ years.
During Covid, we were allowed to carry over more time than normal. I didn’t take a lot in 2022, because we were understaffed and very busy. As of 2023, I’m now left with way too much time to easily take, given the staffing and workload levels, and I don’t see either of those changing in the coming months.
I essentially need to take more than a week off every quarter to not lose any of my time, but I hate to leave my team to pick up the slack. And if I manage to do that, I’ll have a fully excessive amount of time to take off in 2024.
My boss and the president (her boss) are hesitating to fully staff the department. We need at least an intern, a digital/graphics specialist, and a generalist to cover excess workload/absences. Should I just schedule my time off as preferred, and leave the coverage to my supervisors, or do I need to take staffing levels into consideration? I don’t really care if my boss is inconvenienced, but the rest of the team are friends.
No, you don’t need to take your company’s staffing decisions into account when deciding whether to use your earned compensation . I get not wanting to inconvenience your coworkers, but your company’s staffing decisions are what’s inconveniencing them, not your own actions (just like you’re not inconveniencing your coworkers by taking your full salary even if it leaves less money for department spending). In fact, not taking your earned vacation time just makes it easier for your company to be in denial about its actual staffing needs.
Take your vacation time.
4. Shouldn’t we get premium pay for weekend work?
I’m in production engineering for a car company. Although we used to have a very complicated system of casual hours plus overtime during the week, overtime on Saturday, and double time on Sunday, that all went away with the recession of 2009. We had to fight our way through seven years of comp time and extended time hell until in 2016 they decided, hey, you guys AREN’T overtime-exempt after all, and now we get time and a half for anything over 40 hours.
With that behind us, I know that they can’t take overtime pay for overtime work away. They can have us only work 40 hours, and only get paid 40 hours, and that’s fine. The sneaky trick I am worrying about them revisiting is the dreaded “Your ‘weekend’ is now Wednesday and Thursday, so see you in here on Saturday and Sunday doing those weekend installs on straight time” dodge that they have done once before for several months.
The issue is this. Overtime pay is paid for hours over 40, but you are expected to be on the clock eight hours a day during the week. Thus, the weekend is always premium time. This jibes with the American concept of the weekend where you go and do things to have fun; your kids have ball games, you are going to a park, your family is hosting a cookout for your cousins, etc. Forcing you in on a weekend merits premium compensation, one way or the other.
So, how about it? Can a non-minimum-wage company force you to trade Saturday and Sunday for two days off during the week, even when weekends are regarded as premium time? Could they if they gave you three days off in the week as compensation?
There’s no legal requirement that weekends be treated differently than weekdays — employers aren’t required to pay you overtime for them (as long as your overall hours for the week don’t go over 40) or give you extra time off to make up for it. The law treats weekend shifts exactly like weekday shifts.
That said, your coworkers can certainly trying advocating for a weekend pay premium (and some companies offer that).
5. Is it awkward to reconnect with a contact right after she posted jobs I’m interested in?
I recently moved back to my hometown and have been working from home. I really liked my job, but our organization seems to be faltering a bit (not getting enough new business, some toxic leadership traits, too many departures). I was thinking about reconnecting with folks from my old network in my hometown who I’ve lost touch with over the past few years to kind of prepare for a future job search. Literally yesterday I thought to myself, “Oh, I should reach out to Elsa?” but I hadn’t sent the email yet. Today Elsa posted two separate jobs that I might really be interested in on LinkedIn. Should I just apply to one of the jobs and say some of what I might have said in my reconnect email in my cover letter? Should I send the reconnect email and hope she has time to chat and when we do see if that leads towards an invite to apply? Should I be more direct in my reconnect email that I also saw she posted some jobs I might be interested in? I was hoping to genuinely reconnect, but now it feels like asking for a job and I hate that.
You’re not asking for a favor — she posted saying she’s looking for people to do X, you do X, and it’s in your both of your interests to see if it would be a good match.
I think you’re feeling like it’s somehow rude to apply before you’ve reconnected separately, but it’s really not — this is how professional networks work! It’s very common to fall out of touch for a while and then get back in touch when it looks like your professional interests align again. These are business relationships; it’s different than in the social realm (where it would indeed be rude to, for example, reconnect with an old acquaintance solely because they have something you want like a lottery windfall or a summer home at the beach).
Go ahead and apply the way you normally would, and then send her an email letting her know that you did (exactly the same way you would with a business acquaintance who you’d be in more frequent contact with).
You may also like: my boss won't stop texting me -- and I'm in a hospital bed is my coworker trying to sabotage me? pregnant coworker keeps saying awful things to my terminally ill sister