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my boss made me verify that I’m really exercising
A reader writes: My office has an exercise leave program that allows us to stack our two 15-minute breaks to leave early, arrive late, or use the time midday for exercise. This benefit may be used three times per week, and may be combined with our flexible schedule and lunch break to allow for longer […] The post my boss made me verify that I’m really exercising appeared first on Ask a Manager.
A reader writes:
My office has an exercise leave program that allows us to stack our two 15-minute breaks to leave early, arrive late, or use the time midday for exercise. This benefit may be used three times per week, and may be combined with our flexible schedule and lunch break to allow for longer midday exercise periods. We complete an annual form, signed by the employee, our boss, and our one-person HR department.
I am a woman on the larger end of the mid-sized range who works out five days a week at barre/Pilates classes, two to three times a week using exercise leave (generally by leaving half an hour early). As of this morning, our executive director (my manager’s boss) states I have to provide verification of every single class I attend from now on and from the past four months. According to his email, he doubts I’ve “used the program appropriately as there is no improvement in your appearance.” Neither my boss nor HR were included in the email, which I have forwarded to my personal email address. He gave me until close of business Friday to submit evidence.
This is the first time I’ve been asked to verify my attendance at my exercise classes. My relationship with my manager is characterized by a high level of mutual trust. I have been here four years and have had no performance issues, including attendance problems, in that time; I have four years of excellent annual and quarterly reviews to back this up. When we all completed our exercise program forms at our recent all staff meeting, our boss even noted that she’s never had to ask for verification.
Thankfully, I have my studio membership receipt and the studio manager was kind enough to run a software report of my electronic sign-ins for the past six months. Though I can verify I have not misused the program, I am disturbed by his email and wonder what advice you have for addressing the fact that his request is based on my size and appearance, and not my work performance.
Wow, that’s offensive.
He shouldn’t be assessing your body to decide whether there’s been “improvement” or not — that’s wildly out of line and pretty damn gross.
It’s also not up to him to decide whether exercise should affect someone’s body in a particular way at all. Exercise can be good for you without always leading to the sort of physical change that would be visible in work clothes (like a daily walk, for example — someone might lose weight or change their muscle composition by doing that, but it wouldn’t be remarkable if colleagues didn’t see visible changes, nor should they be checking for any in the first place).
And it’s utterly boundary-crossing (and I would imagine violating and demoralizing) to be assessed this way and told to prove yourself when no one else has been asked for similar evidence. If your workplaces wants to change their program to require documentation, they certainly can — but singling out a single person on the basis of physical appearance is not okay.
I would strongly consider saying this to your boss, executive director, and HR: “I am deeply uncomfortable that I’ve been singled out and asked to provide documentation that hasn’t been requested from anyone else, apparently on the sole basis of an assessment of my appearance — an assessment that’s not appropriate for anyone at work to be conducting. I’d like an acknowledgement that this was mishandled and won’t happen again.” If you’d be more comfortable just talking to HR and asking them to handle it on your behalf, you can do that too.
You could also look into local and state laws on weight discrimination. Federal law doesn’t prohibit discrimination based on appearance or weight (and the ADA doesn’t cover weight in most cases), but Michigan and some cities (including New York City and Washington, D.C.) have laws prohibiting weight discrimination, and Washington courts have ruled that weight is protected under their discrimination law. If you live in a jurisdiction that provides that protection, you should cite that as well (“I believe this puts us in violation of X law”).
Your executive director is an ass.
The post my boss made me verify that I’m really exercising appeared first on Ask a Manager.
