AAM: Postdoc angry manager didn't disclose her pregnancy earlier

[minoanmiss]

My new hire said I should have told him about my maternity leave before he arrived

I’m writing for a bit of a reality check. I know you aren’t an academic expert, but this feels like more of a people management problem to me. I am a principal investigator (PI) in an academic laboratory in Canada, so I manage a small team. I started a new team member, Joffrey, in January. Joffrey is American, and it took a little time to get his paperwork in order. He was on a one-year renewable contract; I had committed to him for that period of time (breach of contract would need to be pretty egregious for me to be able to fire him —not that I was planning to). I did expect/hope that he would stay for at least two years, and that hope was communicated at the start. The point is that he had some guarantee of stability.

He’s been working on a team project with a team which includes two other PI’s and two industry partners, who he met during the interview process, and there are five other team members at his level who he is working with.

Joffrey quit after just two months – two days after I announced to the team that I was going on parental leave in five months. I announced it as part of a discussion introducing the person who would be covering my role on the team for the time I’ll be on leave (it’s Canada, so I will be gone for six months or one year).

During his resignation, Joffrey had a litany of small-ish complaints (it took a month to get him ethics approval from the hospital to see the data he was going to be working on, so in the meantime he was doing small learning “pointless” tasks, it took a month for him to get onto the extended health plan, he didn’t like his work station location). His big complaint, however, was that I should have given him the “professional courtesy” of telling him about my upcoming parental leave before he arrived – so approximately 7-8 months before the child is due.

I do get that it’s a big deal to move countries for a job, and it’s a really big thing to quit a job in a foreign-ish country after you’ve gone to the expense of moving. My guess is that it felt a little unsettling to know that his first point of contact would be leaving, but this feels like an extreme reaction. I was just one manager in a team of mentors, and I expected that he would be up and running and a well functioning team member after seven months working on the project, so the impact on his career would be minimal (or positive if he demonstrates good leadership).

Obviously I released him from his contract at his request, but I feel taken aback by his expectations surrounding parental leave. I found it incredibly regressive, but am I being unreasonable?

No. It’s not reasonable for a colleague to expect to be informed about your pregnancy when you’re only one or two months pregnant. (Is Joffrey aware that many people wouldn’t even know they were pregnant that early, let alone be sure of their plans?) Sure, I can see how starting a new job and learning that the person you thought would be managing you will be going on a lengthy leave, but (a) it’s scheduled for seven months after he started, not a couple of weeks, and (b) that’s not generally “I must quit this job” territory or “how dare you not inform me of this earlier” territory.

You told your team when you were four months pregnant. That’s really reasonable, and it’s earlier than many people do.

It sounds like Joffrey might have been dissatisfied with the job in general. Sometimes when that’s the case people search for clearly articulable reasons to pin their dissatisfaction on, even when that’s not quite the thing driving their unhappiness. Maybe that happened here, or maybe Joffrey is just unreasonable. But you didn’t owe him earlier notice.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

A significant minority of commenters think Joffrey is justified. I cannot even.

[ioplokon]

it's that thing of like, it's understandable that he's a bit annoyed about it (in the sense that it's normal to be selfishly annoyed about things that are cool and good but inconvenient for you personally), but his expectation of what should have happened is not reasonable.

[cereta]

Out of curiosity, is there a gender breakdown of that minority?

[minoanmiss]

I'm not sure. At least one person declared herself a fellow woman in academia.

[jadelennox]

I've worked with people like Joffery before. They were people who decided to quit for their own reasons (in academia, often "the other lab I liked better got the funding to hire me"), and wanted to blame others, and threw a lot of spaghetti at the wall.

At two months pregnant, most people haven't even told their families.

[castiron]

It's legitimate for him to feel disappointed, and it's even legitimate for him to think "well, if I'd known my PI would be going on leave for a large chunk of this postdoc, I wouldn't have taken it."

But he's not entitled to learn about LW's pregnancy when it's at so early a stage that LW themselves might not have known they were pregnant during the interviews. (I'm assuming LW is the pregnant one, though the wording of the letter leaves open the possibility that LW's spouse is the pregnant one.)

If LW were looking about for other jobs, would any reasonable person have expected them to say "Just so you know, I'm job-hunting and had a promising interview, and if I'm offered the job I'm outta here" to a potential postdoc? No. The pregnancy was at the same stage -- promising, but not at the stage of 99% likely to work out.

[nineveh_uk]

+1 I don't think the PI has grounds to be annoyed with him for not sticking around when the person he expected to work with isn't going to be there, and as someone who isn't an established member of the lab he might not be so sanguine about hopes of subsequent funding, the other PIs' work less attractive to him or whatever. Post-docs do need to look out for their own careers. But he's being ridiculous in expecting to get early notice of a pregnancy like that, and the PI can quite reasonably be annoyed by his demanding that.

[minoanmiss]

This is a side note, but: I have always had the idea that it's not my boss's business to worry about if I am disappointed, etc, by a decision. I need to do my job and, if it's a good job, I can offer factual ideas and observations (if it's a bad job they don't pay me to think and if they want me to have an opinion they'll tell me what it is). But my emotions are my own and my boss has no reason to care. Admittedly I'm not a professional scientist (sigh) so maybe at those levels one can be a full human and not a robot.

[lethe1]

I don't know about the US and Canada, but in the Netherlands you aren't even obliged to mention you are pregnant when you are applying for a job.

[xenacryst]

Certainly not required in the US, and if employment decisions are clearly based on such information, gained by any fashion, then they can be legally contested. That is to say, pregnancy is a protected class and employment cannot be based on it.

[likeaduck]

Not in Canada either!

[chiasmata]

Actually, it’s the “took a whole month to get ethics approval” bit that really confirms to me Joffrey has weird expectations. Only a month! Dude.

[xenacryst]

I mean, to me it sounds like a bullet dodged. "Joffrey" was going to have problems sooner or later, and his huff arrived early and he left in it.

[tielan]

his huff arrived early and he left in it.

*yoinks that*

[xenacryst]

Please do! I can't remember where I first yoinked it from, but it's a beautiful phrase!

[tielan]

It is wonderfully evocative!

[purlewe]

Perfectly described!

[conuly]

Many people wait to make sure the baby is going to stick around before they start telling even their closest friends and family members. That's perfectly reasonable, and he's being a jerkface.

[ysobel]

Now I'm just imagining the other end of the spectrum, like... "Good news, everybody! If all goes well I will be taking maternity leave in nine months!" every time sex happens.

[conuly]

Not sure they'd appreciate that any more.

[minoanmiss]

This is what anyone who demands to be told before three months deserves.

[swingandswirl]

That sound you hear, OP? Is the bullet whistling by you.

Seriously, WTF.