mentee was fired for using a vulgar term, asking candidates which position in a band they’d choose, 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 mentee was fired for using a vulgar term

I work in a regulated industry and there are specific education and license requirements to work here. My company has a mentorship program for those who are new to the industry. I am one of those with the highest non-management title at my company, and my manager encouraged me sign up for the program. I was assigned an entry-level employee from my company, “Wendy.”

I thought things were going well. Wendy was bright and on the ball. But Wendy was let go from her job and I’m wondering if I should have done more to advocate for her. I think this was a misunderstanding. Wendy had (to me) expressed her admiration for one of the managers at our company. This manager, “Caitlin,” is several levels above my own manager and is well-known in our industry. The misunderstanding happened over something Wendy said that was meant to be a compliment, but Caitlin felt it was an insult. Wendy said Caitlin was “serving C-word” (not abbreviated when she said it). She meant this as a compliment. (I’m almost 50, and I am not on social media so I have never heard this saying but apparently it is supposed to be complimentary).

Caitlin didn’t see it that way. She thought Wendy was insulting her. Caitlin felt Wendy was calling her a name to other people, clients, and online when she found out Wendy had been saying it. (Wendy never used the phrase in front of me.) I understand both sides. I completely understand why Caitlin thought it was an insult. I also see Wendy’s point of view and have never known her to be malicious. In fact, Wendy has always shown the opposite. My question isn’t about who was right, but whether I should have done more to advocate for Wendy. I feel guilty for not pushing back to my manager when Wendy was let go over this. I feel like I could have spoken up about this being a misunderstanding and how Wendy was bright, did good work, and was nice to everyone around her — basically how out of character it would be for Wendy to insult anyone, especially someone she admired. No one blames me for what happened and I was asked to participate in the mentorship program again. But I am afraid I did a disservice by not pushing back on Wendy being let go, and I’m afraid of making the same mistake again. What do you think? I would appreciate hearing what you think.

First, for people who don’t know the expression, it basically means “unapologetically feminine and powerfully badass.” It is intended to be complimentary — and it very much would not sound that way to anyone who didn’t know the meaning.

Anyway, this isn’t on you. You really weren’t in a position to intervene; mentors don’t typically have that power (unless they have significant influence and authority in general, but that would be something that existed independently of their mentor role). Yes, you could have explained where Wendy was coming from, but I imagine Wendy did that herself anyway. The issue is that she displayed pretty terrible judgment! It would be one thing for her to have said that about Caitlin once, but saying it repeatedly was just tremendously bad judgment in a work context, where lots of people won’t know the meaning of a very vulgar and insulting-sounding slang phrase. Her intentions matter, but the outcome matters too, and the outcome in this case was that she was going around using a wildly vulgar phrase about a well-known woman in your industry without contemplating that it might be misunderstood or otherwise become an issue. I wouldn’t have fired her for it (to me it’s a coaching moment, not a firing one) but I’m also not surprised that someone did.

There was no real room for you to do anything differently. If you’d heard Wendy use the phrase, you could have corrected her, but you didn’t. Your job as a mentor is to support your mentee’s growth, give advice, and be a sounding board, but the role isn’t that of a manager or a mediator. You were well-positioned to be a sort of character witness, yes, but I’m not sure it would have mattered in this case. This was Wendy’s mistake, not yours.

2. Interview question: which position in a band would you choose?

I was driving around listening to Crosby, Stills, Nash, and sometimes Young and started pondering a theoretical Interview question: if given a choice, which member would you choose to be? I realize far too few people know that band so I started pondering a different question: assuming you would play any position, which position in a band would you choose (lead singer, lead guitar, bass, or drums)? The idea is that question could potentially give somebody an idea of just how confident in themselves a person is. A person who picks drums is someone who can keep a project moving and is reliable but is not necessarily out front leading, for example.

I am not in any danger of conducting interviews any time soon, but since I spend quite a lot of my working day on the road, I think of things like this. I’m curious what you think!

Well … it could be something to ponder outside of a work setting, but I would recommend against it as an interview question! Too many people don’t know enough about music to know how to even begin thinking about which position they’d choose. And even if they do have a well-informed answer, it won’t tell you the kinds of things you need to learn to make a good hire. You don’t want to ask candidates questions just for the sake of asking questions, or because a question seems fun — you want to get really clear on what’s needed to excel in that position and then ask questions specifically designed to get at those things. Unless you are putting together a new prefab boy band, this question won’t do that.

A boring answer to a fun question, sorry.

3. I think my manager wants me to be a different person

I am a middle school teacher. I recently started at a new school with a very corporate culture.

I received an employee evaluation from my principal. Evaluations from principals are pretty normal, but this was a very lengthy evaluation with a lot of corporate jargon, which I’m not used to. Reading the evaluation made me feel like the principal dislikes me personally and wants me to change my personality. One of the things it said was that I “did not contribute to a collegial environment.” This might just mean that she doesn’t think I speak up enough at meetings, since she mentioned that when we met to discuss the evaluation, but the language makes it sound like people find me actively unpleasant. I don’t know what I could have done to make people feel this way.

I asked a friend who works in the corporate world what she thought, and she said not to ask for clarification and not to disagree — she said all they want to hear in response to these evaluations is “yes, I’ll do that.”

It’s true that I’m not very talkative or bubbly, but I don’t think I’m unpleasant. I resent being expected to pretend to be someone I’m not. This has me feeling like they don’t really want me here and I should leave this school and possibly education altogether. Am I misreading this?

Whoa, wait — that’s a big leap that isn’t warranted by what’s happened.

Your friend’s advice was bad and you should disregard it. No good manager just wants to hear “yes, I’ll do that” in response to feedback if you don’t understand what it means. They want you to implement the feedback, yes — but you can’t do that if you don’t understand it, and in that case you need to ask questions so that you do. Ideally you’d go back to your principal, say you’re taking the feedback seriously, and ask for more information so you can make sure you’re both on the same page. Ask for more specifics about what she’s asking you to do differently. You can’t evaluate the feedback without that.

After learning more, if you still think you’re being asked to change your entire personality, you can think about whether it’s a role you want to stay in. But there’s no way to assess this without getting more information — and jumping to possibly leaving the entire field over one person’s unclear feedback would be recklessly premature.

4. Interviewer wants me to tell them my current salary

During an initial job interview, the interviewer disclosed that they were originally looking for someone more junior than my experience, but they were reconsidering the experience needed to be successful in the role and believed that it may needed to be a more senior position. Fast forward multiple interviews — I’ve asked for the salary range they would pay for the role, and the HR manager says they don’t know and that the team has not discussed it. They would like me to disclose my salary.

I am hesitant to share because my cash requirements would differ based on the equity package and its structure, and I don’t think this can be adequately explained with a simple number.

I likely have one more interview before we get to an offer. In this scenario, is there any advantage to me being a first mover and disclosing my salary range with the caveat that it’s flexible based on equity package?

There’s no reason you need to disclose your salary. Instead, you should tell them the range you’re looking for — the range that would make you seriously consider leaving your current job for this one, along with whatever caveats you have about the structure of the equity package. That’s the part that’s relevant to them, not what you’re making now.

5. I was fired for something my boss said was OK to do

I asked my boss if it was okay to drive a company vehicle home. He said it was okay. His boss told him to write me up and fire me, so he did. Is this legal? Also, should my boss had been fired as well for telling me that I was allowed to? What can I do? Is suing the company a possibility? If I do sue, would I win, or would I just be losing more money and wasting time?

It’s not illegal to fire you for an unfair reason (and this definitely sounds unfair). Most employees in the U.S. are at-will, meaning that you can be fired for any reason at all, as long as it’s not based on illegal discrimination (i.e., firing you because of your race, gender, religion, disability, or other protected class) or retaliation for engaging in legally protected conduct (like firing you for making a good faith complaint of sexual harassment or discrimination). There are two exceptions to this: (1) if you have a contract, which most U.S. workers don’t, or (2) if your company has an employee manual that commits to always using specific disciplinary procedures before firing someone; if it does, they’re usually obligated to follow those procedures first. But aside from that, it’s generally legal to fire someone for any reason, even if the reason is unfair or illogical.

People often hear the term “wrongful termination” and assume it means that there’s legal recourse if you were fired for a wrong or unfair reason, but it really just means that you were fired for one of the illegal reasons above.

However, you can file for unemployment, and if you explain you were fired for doing something your manager specifically gave you permission to do, your chances of getting benefits are good. I’m sorry this happened.