I Just Returned to Work From Maternity Leave. My Boss Is Sabotaging Me.

Good Job She’s being unreasonable. Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Adobe Stock and Maryviolet/iStock/Getty Images Plus. Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Good Job is Slate’s advice column on work. Have a workplace problem big or small? Send it to Laura Helmuth and Doree Shafrir here. (It’s anonymous!) Dear Good Job, I’ve been at my company for two years. I recently had a baby and returned from maternity leave. I thought my boss would be understanding and considerate, as she has kids herself, but she expected me to be functioning at 100 percent full speed the day I got back. In reality, I was a sleep-deprived, hormonal mess who had no choice but to be back at work after the minimum 12 weeks off required by the Family and Medical Leave Act. I was exclusively breastfeeding and transitioning to returning to work, pumping, and leaving my new baby. I was just catching up from being out. Not surprisingly, I made some mistakes and oversights on the intense deadlines and projects she tasked me with the first week or so when I got back, which was not a good look for her or our team. She wrote me up for them. Is she being unreasonable in expecting me not to have any sort of ramp-up period when coming back from FMLA? Is she trying to find excuses to get rid of me now? —Exhausted New Mom Dear Exhausted New Mom, People who go through an ordeal often emerge with one of two attitudes: “Nobody else should have to suffer like I did,” or “I got through it, so everybody else should suffer like I did.” Among the admirable former group are people who paid off extortionate college loans and now support loan forgiveness. Among the latter are doctors who survived grueling clinical rotations and think every medical resident should experience the same sleep deprivation. Your boss might be one of those people who had a miserable return to work after her kids were born and thinks you should just power through it and not complain. It’s also possible she covered for you during your leave and is irritated about that, or maybe she wrote up your mistakes to cover for herself because she’s worried about her own job. She might have overreacted because she was stressed about something unrelated. Or her reaction might have been appropriate if managers in your workplace document problems as part of a “lessons learned” process aimed at solutions rather than blame. Whatever your boss’s motivations or the severity of the write-up, your response should be the same. Your boss hasn’t offered a ramp-up process—which, you’re right, would make sense for everyone involved—but you can try to arrange one yourself and frame your return in a way that could protect you from being fired. Ask to schedule a conversation with your boss to catch up on what you missed during leave and prioritize your tasks now that you’re back. If you haven’t yet, apologize for your earlier mistakes. Tell her you’ve learned from that experience and are trying to anticipate and avoid problems. Keep the discussion focused on succeeding at work and don’t mention the emotional and physical toll of returning to the office when you are nursing an infant. Unless she shows you otherwise, assume that you can’t trust her to be sympathetic. Come to the meeting with some practical suggestions: Should you team up with whoever took on your work while you were out to finish up projects together? Would it make sense to focus on projects you’re already familiar with before you take on new ones while you’re getting back up to speed? Would she like to review your projects at an earlier stage to identify any problems? Give her a chance to tell you what her priorities are, listen and nod, thank her for her guidance, and send her regular updates to show you’re following through on her instructions. If you get the impression she’s hazing you, document everything while you look for another job. Please keep questions short (<150 words), and don‘t submit the same question to multiple columns. We are unable to edit or remove questions after publication. Use pseudonyms to maintain anonymity. Your submission may be used in other Slate advice columns and may be edited for publication. Dear Good Job, Is job-sharing a thing anymore? I remember it was fairly common when I was a child, and I feel like it was a great solution for a lot of working moms, people with disabilities, and students like myself. But I haven’t seen any companies advertising this kind of opportunity since I started in the workforce in 2002. At this stage in my life, a job share would really be beneficial (because I am a working mom who has a disability and is trying to finish a degree). Do any companies out there still do this? —Share and Share Alike Dear Share and Share Alike, Job sharing can be such a good idea. From an employer’s perspective, they get two people’s experience and ideas for the pay of one full-time position. When an employer offers job sharing, they’re signaling that they’re flexible and relatively humane, which can help them recruit and retain great staff. If the job-sharers are hourly, they won’t qualify for overtime if they work longer than anticipated, and if they’re salaried, well, the employer gets double the unpaid overtime that salaried workers often perform. That last advantage for employers is obviously a disadvantage for employees. The job-sharers also have to coordinate with one another, especially if someone has to be on duty each day. If the person you share with doesn’t do their part, you’d be stuck covering for them. The main disadvantage for employers is administrative: double the paperwork, evaluation, processing, supervision, etc. for one full-time equivalent job. Check with the career counseling office at your institution to see if they know of local employers who hire for job-sharing roles. If you still have some flexibility in what classes you can take, you might be able to train for these jobs as you finish your degree. Overall, though, I think you’d have more luck searching for part-time jobs or those with flexible hours. Once you start working for an organization, you’ll be in a better position to find or suggest job-sharing opportunities within it, and to pick up more hours or convert to a full-time role once you have fewer demands on your time. —Laura More Advice From Slate My boyfriend was in a wedding recently for his good friend as a groomsman. When we first got the invite (we live together and have for 3 years) we discovered I wasn’t invited and he did not have a plus one. We’ve met this couple before and they knew we had been dating for close to four years by that point. I was a little hurt when all the pre-wedding festivities started and still, no one said anything about him getting a plus one for me despite other members of the bridal party having a plus one… Never miss new Slate Advice columns Get the latest from Prudie and our columnists in your inbox each weekday, plus special bonus letters on Saturdays. Advice Workplace Jobs