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

1. I’m required to take two weeks off and I don’t want to

I graduated college last year and started a full-time job in November (thanks for all your help and advice on resumes, cover letters and interviewing). In this industry and anything related, it’s mandatory each employee, whether entry-level, receptionist, management, admin or board of directors, take two weeks off work in a row once every calendar year. These two weeks don’t count against our PTO. I have two weeks of PTO separate from this and those can be taken as individual days if I want. Sick time is also separate from PTO. The two weeks in a row is mandatory to prevent fraud and burning out.

My two weeks off in a row starts next Monday. It seems like such a waste to me. I don’t have anything planned. The kind of work we do is confidential and regulated so working from home / telecommuting at any level isn’t a thing in this industry. I’m not allowed to go to the building I work at or call or email during the two weeks.

Is there any way I can decline or push back? I am not close to burning out since work and home life are kept so divided. I am too new to be involved in any fraud and I offered to let my boss double check or look over everything I have touched. I don’t know why I have to take two weeks off for no reason when I don’t have a trip or anything planned. My boss offered to change it to a few months where there is an opening in the two week schedule but I don’t have the money for a vacation and I would still just be bored sitting at home. How can I talk to my boss about this? I am not looking forward to being off and don’t feel I need it.

Don’t push back on it. If it’s mandatory, it’s mandatory. And pushing back will look a little odd — not necessarily “Jane might be committing fraud” odd (although maybe that too), but more like “Jane doesn’t have a healthy relationship to work and/or doesn’t understand what ‘mandatory’ means” odd.

The fact that the two weeks don’t come out of your PTO is amazing, and somewhat unusual. This is two weeks of free vacation! You’re being paid for not working. Spend it reading, watching movies, seeing friends, cleaning and organizing your house — whatever sounds like enjoyable leisure time to you. If there’s nothing you can think of that would be appealing, then think about using that time to volunteer somewhere that could use a daytime volunteer (which can sometimes be hard for organizations to find).

2. Colleague has a “food emergency” every other day

One of our senior faculty has a habit of coming to our (lower level staff) office every day or two, frantically asking for “a handful of almonds” or “any kind of food you have lying around.” A little while ago, she tried to break into a (clearly marked and sealed) reserved platter for someone’s private event. She makes more than twice as much as any of us, so I’m pretty sure it isn’t a matter of need, but just poor planning. I’m not sure whether I should have a private word with her. It seems she only does this to staff with lower standing who feel less comfortable saying “no.”

She’s teaching faculty, and my supervisor and I are administrative support staff. She is tenured and very high up in the department hierarchy, while we are fairly replaceable and on the much lower end of the pay scale. She is friendly to us, but she’s also not just looking for an excuse to come down and visit, as she doesn’t stay for more than a minute when one of these situations arises.

Someone should tell her to cut this out, but given the hierarchy in play, I’m not sure it should be you or your boss.

The easiest way to deal with this might be for all of you to just start saying “No, sorry,” every single time she comes looking for food. If she’s never rewarded for doing this, she’s likely to eventually stop.

If that doesn’t work, then your boss could talk to whoever the most senior person in charge of the admin staff is, and get that person to discreetly tell her to knock it off, pointing out that the power dynamic is putting people in an awkward position. But a few weeks of consistent “nope, we don’t have food” might be enough to get through to her.

By the way, “a handful of almonds” is an oddly specific request, and I’m so curious about what’s going on with her and why she’s not planning ahead.

3. My peer scheduled a weird recurring meeting and is assigning our team work

We have a team of three in a larger department of 15. Every Monday, our small team meets with our supervisor and one other person who’s peripherally tied to our work to go over action items. Recently, our newest hire — who’s our only part-timer, although not technically “junior” to me — suggested a meeting on another day of the week for just the three of us. I get why there might be value in collaborating on smaller projects and details without our supervisor and this more peripheral coworker, but these meetings are long and strange. This coworker, let’s call her Jane, leads the meeting, decides the action items and agenda, and then assigns everyone work. Thus far, I’ve mostly been baffled. I’ve offered to help out on the things I can and passed on projects that I can’t take on. She hasn’t pushed back when I say no, but it’s odd vibes. I get the sense she’s re-assigning the work she’s been given to the entire team. I’ve mentioned that a few of the conversations we’ve had really need higher-level approval and she’s pushed back pretty sharply to say we don’t. Also, our office is very hierarchical and this is just the kind of thing that’s Not Done here.

She’s very close to the other person on our team, and I’m polite and professional (although not close) with both of them. It hasn’t seemed worth it to push back on the need for this meeting to happen at all, but I’m usually busier than they are and I’ve skipped it a few times when I just couldn’t swing it. I’m not even sure of my question other than to say — is this odd or does it just feel odd? Would I be justified in putting a stop to it or is it better to keep attending and committing to only the things I can do? If I do need to push back, how do I politely tell Jane I think she’s overstepping and wasting our time?

Well, you could just mention this to your boss, explain that it doesn’t feel like a good use of time and that’s it’s odd to have your coworker assigning work to people, and — assuming she seems surprised to learn this is happening — ask her to intervene. (And you might mention a few of the specific assignments where you suspect your coworker was re-assigning her own work, because that’s likely to really alarm your manager if so.)

But if you want to handle it yourself and you’re sure your boss hasn’t asked your coworker to do this or secretly given her some sort of authority that you don’t know about, you could say something like, “Now that we’ve tried these meetings for a few weeks, I’m going to suggest that we stop holding them regularly unless some specific need arises where we need to collaborate. I don’t think we need them, since Jane typically coordinates this kind of thing herself, and my schedule makes it hard to have another standing meeting on the calendar.” Or even just, “Sorry, I’m swamped and can’t attend.”

And if she finds other ways to try to assign you work, you could just say, “We typically only get assigned work from (manager), and I think she’d want to be in the loop before we go any further with this kind of thing.”

4. Are auditors spies?

I work for a medium-sized religious institution of about 35 employees. Our corporate culture is quite friendly and probably errs on the side of us all being too much up in each other’s business. In the time I’ve been here, though, that’s mostly led to positive outcomes — real warmth and collegiality among colleagues — without much of the drama and lack of appropriate boundaries that can result from close friendships at work. A close colleague and I share an office which can be especially boisterous. This is the result of the nature of our work (design), our personalities, and the fact that other staff members will often drop by our office for a break or a work consultation with a bit of conversation.

Every year we host a team who come in for our annual audit. This year the staff-wide email that went out asked us all to be “mindful of the conversations we had while the auditors were present.” It was followed up by a visit from my boss’s boss (the CFO equivalent) to my office. She reiterated the request in the email, and told us that auditors are trained to listen in on conversations and use what they hear against organizations. She said that “idle chatter” (her phrase) could lead to us getting in trouble.

I care about the institution where I work very deeply. I’m certainly aware that a lot about my office wouldn’t be acceptable in other workplaces, and I have no intention of pushing back on this request. But it does make me feel sort of weird and gross, as though I’m being asked to cover up for something. As far as I know, there’s nothing shady or unethical about our business practices or finances. And if there were, I would much rather that we as a religious institution take responsibility for them and take steps to change. Can you help me understand what’s going on here from my CFO’s perspective? Are auditors actually spies? Is this typical practice?

Auditors aren’t spies, but if they overhear you saying something that sounds potentially alarming, they’d have to spend time checking into it, even if it turns out to be nothing.

I actually ran this question by my mom, a CPA who was an auditor for many years, and she said this: “It’s hard to say without actually hearing the conversations. Maybe they’re just loud and disturbing to the auditors’ work. Auditors sometimes charge by the hour so distraction by even cutesy conversations isn’t a good thing. Also, sometimes in jest, someone may say something that causes an auditor to follow up and waste time even though it was just a joke. Auditors DO listen in on such conversations (I used to go out with the smokers just to hear what they were talking about) but using it ‘against’ the clients isn’t the way I’d phrase it. I don’t see this admonition as any different than one asking staff to keep confidential information out of sight when there are visitors.”

5. Can I ask a why a resume is so bad?

I work at a large university and we have an internal temp program. I recently got a resume from the temp coordinator, who said the candidate is extremely highly recommended, experienced, upbeat, and perfect for my role. The coordinator also said, “Don’t mind the rough resume.” I took a look and the resume is really terrible. There’s Random capitalization Like This throughOut. She misspells the name of the city we live in. She says she has eight years experience, but only has one job listed which is four years worth of work. She says she has experience in several medical fields (gastroenterology, dermatology, etc.) despite not being an MD, RN, or LVN. She lists one of her skills as “I love to be dedicated.” I could go on.

Despite this, I’m inclined to still offer a phone interview because I generally trust our temp services people, but I am wondering if there is any possible way to ask the candidate why her resume is so awful?? Or would it be better to just mention that it looks like it needs an upgrade? Any advice? I admit I am coming from a place of sheer curiosity about how anyone could think a resume like that is acceptable (and why our temp program is letting the candidate get away with it!).

I’d actually start by asking the temp coordinator who sent the resume! She should presumably be able to give you more context about what’s up with the resume and why she recommends the person so highly anyway. Ask her something like, “I know you recommended Jane Smith highly. I’m concerned by the level of sloppiness on the resume and am curious about what else you know about her.” If she just again repeats that the candidate is experienced and upbeat, etc., then say, “Is there something in particular about her qualifications that you’d think would outweigh the problems with the resume?” If she can’t answer that, her recommendation is pretty suspect and I wouldn’t even bother with the phone interview at that point.

Of course, it’s possible that you’re hiring for a role that doesn’t require writing skills or attention to detail. If that’s the case, it may well be worth putting more weight on other skills she brings. (For example, if it’s a reception role that only requires warmly greeting visitors and will never require doing anything in writing, and if she’s wonderful at making visitors feel welcome, maybe she is your person. So it’s worth thinking critically about what does and doesn’t matter for this particular job.)

But either way, I don’t think I’d ask the candidate herself why her resume is so awful. She either needs stronger writing and communication skills for the job (in which case you can’t hire her) or she doesn’t (in which case it would be a little unkind to indulge your curiosity at the expense of making her feel awkward).