when you can’t give a good recommendation, firing someone right before her honeymoon, and more

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

1. Junior staff ask me for recommendations I can’t give without reservations

I work with a number of support positions filled mostly by recent grads. Although they support my role, they are part of a different company and I have no supervisory role over them. A high percentage of them eventually want to go back to school to do my job and I get asked to fill out recommendation forms a few times a year. Sometimes this is an amazing part of my job — I get to pay forward all the help that I received. But I’m struggling with what to do when my opinion of someone’s work isn’t so glowing.

To not mince words, the support staff supervisor is truly terrible at his job. Between this, a toxic culture at their company, and being new to the workforce, many of the support staff have picked up habits that make it hard for me to recommend them without reservation. To give a couple examples, I’ve learned to not worry about some of them until they are a full 30 minutes late (meaning I’ve been doing their job and mine for the first 30 minutes of the day; I’m all for flexible time when coverage isn’t part of the job, but that is definitely not the case here). Anything their supervisor says is viewed as stupid and something that can be ignored and mocked, from the actually asinine to normal work requests. The recommendation forms will ask me to rank something like their punctuality or respect for management, items obviously a little hard to give glowing scores on.

I feel conflicted. None of this is happening in a vacuum; they have often never had a job with a good culture and good management, and a lot of these behaviors have become normalized within their group. On the other hand, my field is small and I don’t want to vouch for someone who ends up not outgrowing the toxicity.

I know from religiously reading your column that one (good!) piece of advice would be to offer to mentor them. The internal politics make that difficult — their company would view me as overstepping, my company would view me as spending time and resources that their company should be handling, and, honestly, I already do so much of their supervisor’s job that the idea of doing even more grates a bit. I would still be willing to try to help, though, if there is a way that is appropriate to my role.

I don’t want to give up writing recommendations completely — some people are truly exceptional. Am I being too harsh, and, if not, is there a good script for turning down recommendation requests from peers?

You aren’t being too harsh. In a small field, your reputation is on the line if you recommend someone who turns out to carry these same bad habits to their next job.

But I do think there’s room to do something here! The key is to do it before you’re at the point where they’re asking you for recommendations.

It doesn’t need to be full-on mentoring, for all the reasons you mentioned. But you could pull these staff members aside individually when you start noticing problems and say something like, “This isn’t something I plan to bring up again, but I want to give you a heads-up: a lot of people in your role end up asking me for recommendations to go back to school for X, and when I write recommendations I’m asked about things like punctuality and respect for management. I see the tough management situation you’re dealing with; I’m not blind to that. But I want to be up-front that if you ever do need a recommendation from me, I’m going to get asked about that stuff and have to be honest, and in some cases haven’t felt like I could write the recommendation at all. I never want to be explaining this to someone for the first time when they’re asking for a recommendation, and I think it’s fairer to say it early on while you can still do something with that information. It’s completely up to you what you do with it! I just want it out there so no one is surprised by it later.”

2. How do I get a security tag removed from a purchase years ago?

What’s the most professional way to approach a retail employee about something that would likely make you look suspicious?

What happened was that almost four years ago, I brought this great bra from Target. I went through the self-checkout line and was distracted by pleasant small talk with an employee. It wasn’t until I got home that I realized that I never got the big red anti-shoplifting thing-a-ma-bob removed, and it somehow didn’t trigger the door alarm at the front. I would’ve driven back to the store to have it removed, but it was late at night at the time.

Through a combination of social anxiety and then-untreated ADHD, I never went back to the store with the bra. I’ve moved to a different state since this had happened, and it’s only compounded my problem.

I re-discovered the bra with the old receipt in storage box this week. The receipt was from November 22, 2021. I would love to just walk into my nearest Target and have the tag removed, but I can’t think of any way to verify to customer service that I bought the bra honestly. (I’m the type of person who gets nervous when I leave a store without buying anything because employees probably assume that I stole something.)

How do I approach an employee about this? What should I do if they bring in security if they’re suspicious? Should the old receipt from a different state be enough verification, or should I do something else?

I’d love to hear from people with recent retail experience on this, but I think you can just bring it in with the receipt and say, “I know it’s ridiculous that it’s been several years, but I bought this bra at a Target in Rhode Island, here’s my receipt, and it still has the security tag on it. I put it aside to bring it back to have the tag removed and then completely forgot about it until recently. Is there any way to get it removed now, since I do have the receipt?” In other words, just lay it out for them!

You say you don’t know how to verify that you bought it honestly, but your receipt does that — or at least it does that as much as any receipt ever does. (It’s also possible that they don’t even sell that bra anymore, which would further lend your account credence, although I don’t even think that will matter.)

So just own it — “I did this weird thing, can you help?” (I feel like a full quarter of my customer service interactions involve me saying some version of “I did this weird thing, can you help?”)

I think they’ll just remove the tag for you. Even if they can’t because it was years earlier, they’re not likely to accuse you of shoplifting when you have a receipt in hand. But if they do, you’ll explain it, and that will probably take care of it! Worst case scenario, they’ll say “this is extremely irregular and we are confiscating this bra,” and you will be no worse off than you are now, except that you will hopefully be able to laugh at this snafu the whole way home.

3. Work transitions when someone is told to leave immediately

A manager on my team (not my supervisor) left the company unexpectedly about a month ago. It’s my understanding he was asked to leave immediately once the company learned he had taken a job with a direct competitor. This is pretty standard in my field and not the first time I’ve seen it happen, although it is the first time I’ve been so directly affected.

Because he was asked to leave so abruptly, there was no time to properly transition his ongoing work. He was in a lead role on two key projects, and the rest of us have been scrambling to make sure nothing falls through the cracks. It’s a bit embarrassing to have to ask clients for information a second or third time if it was something they had already discussed with him. We have access to his work files and emails, which is helpful, but not everything was documented in an easy-to-find way. We are prohibited from reaching out to him with questions, and even if someone did, he is under no obligation to answer.

Is there a better way for companies to handle sudden departures? I realize this can happen in any number of circumstances, like if someone has an unexpected health or family crisis. But, do you think companies should forcefully escort out employees who take jobs with competitors? Do you have any suggestions for the people left in the wake?

It’s not unusual in some industries to have people leave immediately if they’re going to work for a competitor, although of course if someone wants to take trade secrets, contact lists, etc., they can just do that before they give notice. Part of the thinking is that once the move is official, the person will have divided loyalties (and perhaps the preponderance of that loyalty will lay with the new employer) and it’s better to get the person out of the information flow as soon as possible — no point in them continuing to hear details about strategy, etc. — but it’s a bit much.

As for picking up the pieces after the person is gone, all you can really do is what you and your coworkers have been doing: going back over some of his tracks, asking for information again, and so forth. It doesn’t look great to clients, but there’s no other real way to handle it once the person is gone.

4. Firing someone right before her honeymoon

I am firing one of my team members due to a reorg in my team and low performance. She is getting married in three weeks and just came back from a long-term sick leave of four months. Is it better to get it done ASAP or to wait for her to be back from her honeymoon?

I’d do it ASAP because knowing she’s out of a job might change the spending decisions she makes on/leading up to her honeymoon. It’s not going to feel great to either of you, but I think it’s fairer to her to have all the information as soon as she can have it. (I do think reasonable people could disagree on this one, though.)

However, the fact that she just returned from a long-term sick leave introduces some legal complications (like whether it will look like she’s being let go because of the sick leave), so you should consult with a lawyer or at least your HR department before doing anything. The law doesn’t stop you from firing or laying someone off who’s been on sick leave, but you want to make sure you can document that the reasons for the decision had nothing to do with the leave.

5. Is this bad LinkedIn advice?

I have a family member who’s been laid off (not government or nonprofit but an industry affected by DOGE cuts). Their work paid for a job placement company.

They told me that the placement company told them to create a LinkedIn profile listing as a current role that’s “seeking role in…” The placement company claims recruiters search for who’s currently working and that’s how to still come up in searches.

It sounds to me like bad advice given by people who aren’t actually hiring managers. I’m concerned if the family member follows this advice it would work against them, but is it not a big deal?

It’s going to look a bit cheesy/salesy and I wouldn’t recommend doing it, but it’s not likely to be held against them, especially if they’re otherwise a good candidate.

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