DW Community Catch-up Thread
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Copa, while recognizing every situation is different and only you are the best judge of whether advice feels like the right path for you, I would not accept this no for an answer. I seem to recall you are already looking for another job.
If it were me, I’d calculate how much I would expect to make in a year from freelancing and add 30%. Then, I’d request another meeting with the boss, within the next couple of days – or just go and drop in, if your workplace supports that kind of thing. I’d tell him that you’ve been thinking and that unfortunately, this ‘no’ isn’t going to work for you. A conflict of interest is legitimate but ‘no because an outdated (and possibly illegal) policy says no is not. I would flat-out flag for him that while it may be hard to appreciate when his position compensates at a much higher level than yours but the dramatic increases in the cost of living means your standard of living is dropping. So there are 3 choices:
1 – they let you freelance, now
2 – they raise your salary by the amount you would earn from freelancing
3 – you are forced to look for another job, and they will need to absorb the costs of recruitment and training, when they could avoid that entirely by just letting you decide to do what you want on your own time.If he balks, I’d go to his boss about it. If you are valued, they should buckle.
I’d also seek legal advice to find out if employers can restrict your right to earn money on the side. Where I live, they can’t. If that is the case where you live, your other option is to do what you want and not tell him. If they find out, you can produce the evidence that they cannot legally control what you do in your off hours. If they fire you, sue. And of course, in the meantime, you may find another job.
I think it’s bullshit too.
FWIW, my (large) company has a policy where you submit requests to conduct outside business activities through Compliance, so in this situation you’d go to this link and tell Compliance what you want to do and that there’s no conflict of interest, and I think they’d approve it. You might mention it to your boss as a courtesy, or not. If it’s something you’re doing outside of working hours and doesn’t interfere with your primary job, who cares.
I do think you could have another conversation with your boss and say you’d really like to pursue this opportunity, and who would he recommend you speak to in order to get it approved, given that the policy is changing. You might want to speak to an employment lawyer before you do. In my experience it’s ALWAYS been worth it to spend a couple hundred bucks to get their advice before going and having a conversation, so I know my rights and what to ask for.
Your boss probably feels like he owns you and doesn’t want anyone competing for your time. My boss is like that. When I first started here, I signed up to work for her as a contractor 30 hours a week and I was already working for another company (someone she knows and respects) part-time as well. She ended up wanting me to work full time and I was giving the other guy a lot of time too and I ended up gaining a lot of weight and being a bit of a wreck (this was during lockdown which made it even worse). When she had a FT position to offer me, to convert me from a contractor, she made me promise I would no longer do ANY work for the other guy. So petty. I don’t think your boss would be swayed by the arguments CG suggested. It’s something you could try if you were very confident about leaving that place but otherwise I probably wouldn’t.
The executive director is actually the one who has already said “not right now.” My boss was fine with it but asked my permission to clear it with our general counsel, who knows our policies thoroughly. (We work in the legal space and I do trust our GC.) He said there was no conflict but pointed to some policies and told my boss to kick it up to the ED, which my boss did with my permission. That’s where it died. “For now.” The ED should be in my office tomorrow and it may come up. The amount I’d make freelancing isn’t worth jeopardizing my job. I do plan to keep looking as I have been. Mostly right now I feel frustrated, everything feels like a dead end. Companies that pay less than what I make now. TWO ghosting me after panel interviews in December. And I didn’t realize how shitty it’d feel to have the highest earners at work shoot me down in this way.
Yeah, it feels shitty to not be in control and feel like you’re at other people’s mercy. Especially when those people are dads, brads, and chads, probably Gen x or boomers making a good living and you feel stuck.
I think it helps to try to focus on things you’re grateful for, as trite as that sounds.
I’d check back with them and ask them for a time table on when they plan to update the policy. Your boss said they know it’s outdated. The other option is to ask for a waiver. A policy isn’t law, it’s the preferred way to work. For every procedure, there’s the possibility of a deviation. I have no doubt that the GC could come up with a perfectly reasonable way to do this.
I’m trying to stay positive. For one, I don’t NEED the extra money. I just thought it’d be nice to freelance again. It used to be chill and I could take or leave work as it suited my schedule. The freelance org said to let them know if I ever get the green light, so that’s nice, too. It has crossed my mind that I can potentially look for work that would have zero overlap with my company and nobody would need to know. I don’t think it would have crossed my mind to ask internally had the company not been local/in the same realm.
I want to start demanding perks of this allegedly high staff classification I have. (I won’t, but I want to.) I guess that system went hand in hand with our former Mad Men office vibes that I’ve heard about and they had a boatload of odd policies — the weirdest I am familiar with is that we had different bathrooms and closets for staff at different levels. Can I get access to an exclusive restroom as a consolation prize?
That is such bs, copa. Hopefully they do change the policy sooner than later now that this came up.
Happy Valentine’s Day! This used to be the dating thread so thought it would be appropriate.
General vent (but advice welcome anyways) incoming.
My 13-year-old daughter’s mom’s partner (but not married yet) informed her (and her younger half-sister) that he’s planning on proposing this weekend. Daughter is feeling really stressed out about this and I really wish he wouldn’t have mentioned anything at all and just popped the question on his own so they could more delicately inform the kids, instead of dragging daughter into a nebulous wait-and-see mode of waiting.
I guess it shows he’s really confident she’s going to say yes and I hope she does, but she’s said things in the past that suggest that she might not. Her mom has a really bad habit of using daughter to vent about the would-be-stepdad which is not something I’m fond of.
I know this is kind of a not-my-monkeys-not-my-circus problem, but I’m also anxious about it because if I was a betting man I see her saying no, and damn would that make shit at her other home awkward.
Is your daughter stressed because she doesn’t like to be the sounding board or because she’s worried that mom will say no and she’ll feel responsible for not saying something to partner?
Can you reassure her that she’s not responsible for partner’s success/failure in this venture. She is the child and is absolutely not responsible for an adults’ successes, failures, or their emotions about it.
Can you give her some phrases or ways to nip her mom’s bitch sessions in the bud? It doesn’t have to be long and drawn out – more “Mom, I’m 13. This is way above my paygrade.” or “Mom you need to get some girlfriends in for this.” or “I don’t know mom, I’m 13, my friends who are dating don’t have these problems. Maybe you need to talk to Aunt or Friend” or simply “I suppose I’ll understand this when I’m older.”
The stress was the fear that her mom would actually say no, and their home life would be disrupted and it would be really hard on her sister.
While she butts heads with her step dad fairly often, she didn’t want to see them split up either. They’ve been together for 10 years now so it’s not like he’s some new guy in the picture.
She had to deal with my own divorce in her own way about a year ago, so she has some complicated feelings about it.
Good news though, she said yes. Phew!
