minoanmiss (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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agonyaunt2020-04-07 12:51 pm
minoanmiss) wrote in agonyaunt2020-04-07 12:51 pm
Entry tags:
Ask a Manager: Why can’t you contact your spouse’s employer to advocate for them?
Cut for length and, um, tone.
A reader writes:
Why are you telling people that spouses as a rule cannot contact their partner’s boss and saying that is unprofessional?
Is that in every situation? What if my spouse is on the autism spectrum or what if an employer is forcing sick workers to come in and illegally break stay-at-home orders given by the government?
I think the advice you are giving on this is off-base. My partner and I are a team, and it is reaching a point where her employer is really pushing her boundaries and mine and she is at her wit’s end with trying to manage it herself. Your advice would be fine if every employer was reasonable and allowed people to stand up for themselves. We both know it doesn’t work like that. Personally, any employer who takes an ego bruising by being respectfully spoken to by someone outside of their employ, to me, is not worth working for at all.
She is trying everything she can to maintain healthy boundaries, but this employer is pushing and pushing and your advice has got people accusing me of not caring about my partner because I’m keeping my nose out of her business when she might be out there passing along COVID or getting it herself. Seriously, I’m being accused of not caring by thinking of her career over her health and safety! All because of your advice with no appreciation context at all.
So can you please rethink your position on this and give out some new advice in the context of life-threatening natural disasters and y’know, employers adhering to laws about discrimination, exploitation, and retaliation.
Also, let’s ask, who does your advice benefit? It benefits employers by shielding them from the realities of their staff’s humanity and seeks to keep them cocooned from that reality. There is no good reason why people should not be allowed to help each other and advocate for each other and I would rather test an employer to see how they react to this to see if they take their duty of care to their employees seriously.
An employer who takes their duty of care to their employees seriously will demonstrate that by how they respond when their employees raise concerns directly. If it takes a third party stepping in, they’ve already failed that test.
More to the point, though, this isn’t about how you believe things should work. It’s about how things do work. And the reality — whether or not you think it should be this way — is that contacting your partner’s employer to advocate on their behalf will undermine them and make them look unprofessional. (It also probably won’t work. If they didn’t listen to their own employee, they’re not likely to listen to someone wholly unconnected with their business.)
There are exceptions to this, but they’re rare: Certainly if your spouse is in the hospital or otherwise too sick to speak and can’t contact their employer on their own, it’s perfectly acceptable for you to do that.
But to advocate on their behalf, because you think you can do it more persuasively than your spouse can? Truly, no.
You asked about a spouse who’s on the autism spectrum. You can help behind the scenes — working out what they’ll say and helping them practice saying it. But it’s theirs to handle — and in most situations, you will undermine them significantly if you step in and handle it for them.
You also asked about an employer who is breaking stay-at-home orders given by the government and — as serious as that is — that’s still not your place. You can again help your spouse behind the scenes, but they’re the one who talks with their employer because those are the parties who have the business relationship. You can brainstorm with your spouse, you can coach them, hell, you can even report the employer to your state if you want to (ideally with your partner’s blessing), but you cannot contact their employer about it on their behalf. If you do, you will enormously weaken your partner’s standing at work and make them look unable to handle their own business affairs. (And really, do you think anyone is going to promote the person whose spouse called to try to fight their battles for them?)
Additionally, because this generally isn’t done, it will come across as controlling and interfering — which will raise some unpleasant thoughts for people about what might be going on in your relationship. Now your spouse has colleagues thinking about and speculating on her relationship, which is not what anyone wants at work.
Again, I’m not saying this is how things should be. I’m saying this is how they are. If you want to argue it would be a better world if spouses could advocate for each other with the other’s employer, feel free to make that argument! But we live in the world we live in, and your spouse has to manage her career in our current reality, not the one you think would be better.
A reader writes:
Why are you telling people that spouses as a rule cannot contact their partner’s boss and saying that is unprofessional?
Is that in every situation? What if my spouse is on the autism spectrum or what if an employer is forcing sick workers to come in and illegally break stay-at-home orders given by the government?
I think the advice you are giving on this is off-base. My partner and I are a team, and it is reaching a point where her employer is really pushing her boundaries and mine and she is at her wit’s end with trying to manage it herself. Your advice would be fine if every employer was reasonable and allowed people to stand up for themselves. We both know it doesn’t work like that. Personally, any employer who takes an ego bruising by being respectfully spoken to by someone outside of their employ, to me, is not worth working for at all.
She is trying everything she can to maintain healthy boundaries, but this employer is pushing and pushing and your advice has got people accusing me of not caring about my partner because I’m keeping my nose out of her business when she might be out there passing along COVID or getting it herself. Seriously, I’m being accused of not caring by thinking of her career over her health and safety! All because of your advice with no appreciation context at all.
So can you please rethink your position on this and give out some new advice in the context of life-threatening natural disasters and y’know, employers adhering to laws about discrimination, exploitation, and retaliation.
Also, let’s ask, who does your advice benefit? It benefits employers by shielding them from the realities of their staff’s humanity and seeks to keep them cocooned from that reality. There is no good reason why people should not be allowed to help each other and advocate for each other and I would rather test an employer to see how they react to this to see if they take their duty of care to their employees seriously.
An employer who takes their duty of care to their employees seriously will demonstrate that by how they respond when their employees raise concerns directly. If it takes a third party stepping in, they’ve already failed that test.
More to the point, though, this isn’t about how you believe things should work. It’s about how things do work. And the reality — whether or not you think it should be this way — is that contacting your partner’s employer to advocate on their behalf will undermine them and make them look unprofessional. (It also probably won’t work. If they didn’t listen to their own employee, they’re not likely to listen to someone wholly unconnected with their business.)
There are exceptions to this, but they’re rare: Certainly if your spouse is in the hospital or otherwise too sick to speak and can’t contact their employer on their own, it’s perfectly acceptable for you to do that.
But to advocate on their behalf, because you think you can do it more persuasively than your spouse can? Truly, no.
You asked about a spouse who’s on the autism spectrum. You can help behind the scenes — working out what they’ll say and helping them practice saying it. But it’s theirs to handle — and in most situations, you will undermine them significantly if you step in and handle it for them.
You also asked about an employer who is breaking stay-at-home orders given by the government and — as serious as that is — that’s still not your place. You can again help your spouse behind the scenes, but they’re the one who talks with their employer because those are the parties who have the business relationship. You can brainstorm with your spouse, you can coach them, hell, you can even report the employer to your state if you want to (ideally with your partner’s blessing), but you cannot contact their employer about it on their behalf. If you do, you will enormously weaken your partner’s standing at work and make them look unable to handle their own business affairs. (And really, do you think anyone is going to promote the person whose spouse called to try to fight their battles for them?)
Additionally, because this generally isn’t done, it will come across as controlling and interfering — which will raise some unpleasant thoughts for people about what might be going on in your relationship. Now your spouse has colleagues thinking about and speculating on her relationship, which is not what anyone wants at work.
Again, I’m not saying this is how things should be. I’m saying this is how they are. If you want to argue it would be a better world if spouses could advocate for each other with the other’s employer, feel free to make that argument! But we live in the world we live in, and your spouse has to manage her career in our current reality, not the one you think would be better.
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If your state has a Stay-At-Home order, then have your wife contact the relevant authorities and make a report about her employer's noncompliance. Ideally, her name and information will not be included when those authorities look into the problem. While this is going on, encourage your wife to find a new job elsewhere. Good luck!
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In other circumstances, I would question the LW's wisdom and relationship with his wife. Alison does so, obliquely. In the current circumstances, I'm inclined to cut the LW a little slack. If any member of my family were being endangered by an employer ignoring stay-at-home orders, I would be extremely upset and should not care to be judged by anything I wrote in such a state.
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1) she was in labor and headed to the hospital but couldn't reach him on his phone
2) he had norovirus and couldn't stop vomiting (and in that case he was actually the one to call and I was like "DUDE WTF GET OFF THE PHONE")
Neither of those are the case here. This guy sounds like he needs to get his head out of his ass and frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if the wife had been offered the option of working from/staying home and opted to keep going in anyway to get away from him.
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