I got scolded for eavesdropping, should I give up on a federal career, and more

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

1. I got scolded for “eavesdropping” when I asked about a task that would involve me

I work in an office with an open floor plan in an older building. Part of my job is to be the front desk receptionist with tasks like making appointments for our clients and greeting them when they arrive. Very few people have actual offices in this space, and if they do, they are right behind my desk. It’s like a weird amphitheatre: I’m up front, the offices are directly behind me in a line with the doors facing my back, and everything behind them is just open cubicles. However, even with office doors shut, I can still very clearly hear my office-holder colleagues, especially if they are in a Zoom meeting and increase their volume.

To avoid overhearing sensitive information which is often discussed at these meetings (and for my own sanity), I have brought in earbuds and headphones to listen to music during lulls. This was preapproved after I brought up the issue in a discussion with my manager when I first started. But I was the subject of scrutiny when I initially started using them. Office holders would bang open their doors after meetings and try to look over my shoulder to make sure I was doing my work. I also received some offhand comments about professionalism, but I always mentioned that our manager approved it. My manager, when questioned publicly, would throw up her hands and say, “That’s how the younger generation is” (I’m in my late 20s) and “Well, at least the work gets done.” Privately, I’ve checked in and she says that she has no feedback and I’m doing great.

Recently, I forgot to bring my headphones and was trying to focus on my work when I heard my name. I overheard one office holder, “Dinah,” mention my name during her meeting, along with telling someone to make an appointment with me. This was all I heard, as I then left my desk for some water. At the end of our lunch break, I thought I could approach the subject by saying, “Sorry Dinah, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop but I overheard my name during a lull in the office and that someone may need to make an appointment. Can you tell me some more information?”

Dinah chastised me loudly, saying that she knew a younger colleague (who just happened to be sitting nearby and had no part in this) and I had been regularly eavesdropping on her and that we were to stop. My manager, who was standing by, chimed in saying, “We shouldn’t listen in case we hear something we don’t want to hear.” I wanted to argue back, but they’re both my superiors so I basically clammed up and accepted the scolding.

I know I shouldn’t have brought up overhearing the comment but at the time I figured it pertained to my work and that at worst, she would gently shut me down, especially with how I couched my language. I’m tired of being in this weird limbo. Would HR be able to help here? Or should I give up and start the job hunt?

Your office sounds horrible! People were so outraged by you using headphones that they tried to check that you were really working and made snarky asides about professionalism? And your manager insults you in public but is nice to you one-on-one? The issue sounds like it’s your entire office culture, which isn’t something HR will be able to solve. I’d just work on getting out.

For what it’s worth, though, what you said to Dinah shouldn’t have been a big deal. It’s normal to overhear things in an office that sound like they might affect you and ask about them, particularly when they don’t sound particularly sensitive. It’s not “eavesdropping”; it’s the nature of working in a space where you can hear other people.

Something is very rotten in your office (and it’s not you).

Related:
I can hear everything my staff says — should I pretend I don’t?

2. Should I give up on having a federal career?

My question is one I’ve been seriously struggling with and would love external expert input on: do I give up on having a federal career and my home in D.C. and start over elsewhere?

I grew up seeing friends and family impacted by the 2007 crash in Michigan (loss of homes, jobs, finances, you name it) and now find myself staring at the top of that same cliff and don’t know what to do. I was maybe five years in to my federal HR career before my contract was illegally defunded and it’s already been four months with no job prospects.

As one of over half a million (and growing) unemployed around D.C. with available jobs in all sectors being actively destroyed every week, I’m terrified that if I don’t cut and run fast enough then I’ll lose my home, my car, any finances I do still have … just … everything. But I dont want to just give up my home either. Any advice?

Right now, the safest assumption is that the chances of being hired into a federal job will be extremely low for the remainder of this administration. That could change (for one thing, they’ve realized they cut too many jobs and are now trying to hire people back; also, in an interesting twist, DOGE staffers themselves now fear getting DOGE’d), but you’ve got to plan based on what we’re seeing right now, and right now trying to get or keep federal employment is not a good prospect. That doesn’t mean that will be the situation forever — it almost definitely won’t be — but it’s the landscape right now.

If you know for sure that federal employment was off the table for the next few years, what would you want to do instead? That’s where I’d focus.

3. I’m not a woman but I keep getting invited to speak at women’s events

I’m in tech, which is quite low on women so there are a bunch of “women in tech” panels and articles and so forth. That’s great! However, I am not a woman and get a lot of invites to speak as a woman — especially as I’m a VP and the pool is small. I’m happy to speak as a non-binary person, but not as a woman so I say, “It looks like you’re looking for a woman here and I’m non-binary, so no thank you.” This almost always fails to work. I get a reply starting with, “Oh, we don’t care” or my personal non-favorite, “In a spirit of inclusion…” which strongly imply that they see me as a woman so are happy to include me, though they likely wouldn’t include a non-binary colleague with a beard.

Any scripts for this one? No one I know has come up with a good one yet.

My guess is that they’re thinking that if you’re perceived as/treated as a woman, you’re likely to face a lot of the same issues as women in tech do. But if that’s the case, they should spell that out and see if you’d be interested through that lens. Instead they’re just kind of blowing off what you said / not engaging with it in a real way, and acting as if they see you as sufficiently “women-adjacent” that it shouldn’t matter.

You could reply this way: “If a future event is specifically advertised as including non-binary people as well, please feel free to check with me again, but non-binary people aren’t women or ‘women-adjacent’ and it would be inappropriate for me to speak there.”

4. Working from bed while recovering from surgery

I am planning for an ankle surgery to take place in July. If they need to do the type of repair they expect, I will need to be completely off my feet for six weeks, then will begin gradually transitioning to weight bearing. During much of this time, I will need to keep my foot elevated. Full recovery is expected to take a year. If they don’t need to do that specific repair, then I’ll be in a boot and back on my feet in a few days. I’m assuming the former will be the case and planning accordingly.

I have a desk-based, fully remote job. All meetings are on Teams, and typically camera-off with the exception of our Friday daily touchbase (the meeting happens daily, we make a point to turn cameras on on Fridays) and 1:1s. I plan to work sitting up in bed, with my foot elevated and my laptop on a tray. Under normal circumstances, working from bed is unprofessional; given these circumstances, how much effort should I put into hiding it?

I joined a new team after coming back from maternity leave in February, so I don’t know this team very well yet. My former manager is now my grand-manager; my current manager seems very kind, flexible, and generally supportive.

If you’re typically camera-off except for your Friday meeting, it should be fine to just let your manager know that you’re going to be camera-off for that one too while you’re recovering since you’ll be bedridden.

It’s not that it would be scandalous to appear from bed under the circumstances (although I wouldn’t do it with a client unless you knew them extremely well), but you don’t need to and you should be able to easily opt out while you’re recovering.

5. Coworkers hang around after their shifts end

I work the graveyard as a security guard from 10:30 pm to 6:30 am. Both of the swing shift officers, after they clock out, stay late. One waits for the bus, while the other waits for his cousin to get off work. Sometimes it can be for an hour, and sometimes one of them will sleep in his car in the garage. Sometimes they’re hanging in the lobby, having loud speakerphone conversations, interfering with the shift change pass-down details, and distracting the patrol guard with non-work-related conversations.

My wife says not to sweat it, but honestly I don’t like it. If I tell my boss, I’ll feel like a snitch. Please can you give me some advice on this?

Some of this sounds like it’s genuinely interfering with work, and some of it isn’t. For the parts that aren’t disrupting anything (like sleeping in their car for an hour), let it go! It’s reasonable for them to need to hang out somewhere while waiting for their rides. That part is fine.

For the parts that are interfering with work (like distracting other from info exchange during the shift change), speak up in the moment: “Hey, I know you need to wait here for a bit, but doing X is making it hard for me to do Y. Can you hang out in a different area after you clock out?”  If they’re not receptive to that — or if you know them well enough to know they won’t be receptive to that — then that’s the part that you should take to your manager. That’s not “snitching”; it’s looping in your boss on a work issue that you don’t have the standing to handle on your own. Just make sure you can explain why it matters to the work (as opposed to just being personally annoyed by it).

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