Coffee Break: Sadie Flat

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1. I am trying to get a compressed time schedule approved at work. They are technically allowed and my job has a zero face time component. I could basically do it from home at 3 am but that’s not allowed so I’m hoping to be allowed to work extended hours 4 days a week instead. What do you think are some persuasive things I can say to make this happen? What would be your concerns?

   1. I’m not sure what industry you’re in so this may wary but:

      – bring a record of the time you’ve taken to complete projects
      – offer to send a list of projects working on weekly if you feel the manager might be hesitant about you slacking off
      – mention any of the times you had to work without supervision or someone being in the office to oversee your work
      – specific times on those days that you would be available and the number/email you’d be available at
      – Perhaps offer reassurance the work would get done and that you would work the extra day if deadlines needed to be met. Be careful offering this up if you believe they would eat up your day on a regular basis
      – Offer to be available via phone for emergencies that may come up on the day off

   2. What is not allowed about the times you’re working (you say you can’t work middle of the night)? That makes a difference in how we might answer.

      1. Working from home isn’t allowed, period, and my compressed schedule has to be within open office hours, so e.g., it can be 8-6 4 days a week but it can’t be 7-3.

   3. I’ve worked at a company where we worked longer hours each pay period and had one day a week off every other week (could be a Monday or a Friday). It had its pros and cons.

      Here were the biggest cons:

      * Will your email be monitored on “off” days. If people want something done, they don’t want to wait. That means folks get frustrated if you’re not responsive enough. And it can get frustrating for you if you feel like you’re constantly dragged in to work those days off because of fires. You may find yourself basically back to working five days a week with even LESS free time because t now you’ve committed to longer work days on the days you were there. It also is hard to schedule things for your day “off” because you may be in this on/off limbo where you’re off–but people still need your work or input because everyone else is working.
      *Meetings also may not wait for you. It can be frustrating to feel like you’ve missed some impromptu decision or conversation that would have benefited from your input.

      I think these arrangements can only work well if you’ve got a job that’s very time clock-ish versus project based (nurse where you don’t take your work home and someone is there to cover vs. attorney with demanding clients or someone working at an advertising agency).

      These days I work from home four days a week and come in once. I’ve also worked three days at home and two days in the office I feel like I have way better balance and control over my workflow and off hours in both of those situations.

      I also think navigating compressed time is a lot more challenging than simply asking for a remote situation with no face time.

   4. The cases where i have seen people take a day off and it being a bit of a problem is when client requests come in when you are not on duty but it’s otherwise normal business hours. Say for instance you take Friday off and work very long hours Monday to Thursday. A client who sends a no-brainer email or opens a simple ticket on a Friday, expects an answer on Friday, not on Monday. In that case, your employer needs to redirect all your Friday’s work to someone who is reachable during normal business hours.

      1. I’m not in a client facing role and I answer my emails from home anyway. Good point to bring up though.

   5. Concerns are (in no particular order) – Is this setting a precedent? Will everyone want this? What are the ramifications to the department if one (or two or six) people do this? What will upper management say? What will your boss say to upper management if they have issues?

      Will OP continue to produce excellent work, be a team-player, be timely? What happens if I need OP on her day out of the office? What do I do if it doesn’t work for the team?

      I would suggest writing a memo, addressing any concerns you think might come up and what you would do to answer these issues. Try to find some benefits to the department (e.g. longer coverage hours on the days you work).

      Are you going to offer a trial period? That way they can walk it back without huge drama. Will they ever need to reach you on the off day? If so, set up a check in or use cell phone or IM or whatever you think would be best (assuming you’re classified as “exempt” – if you’re non-exempt this is trickier and may not work). Check-ins can be once in the a.m. and once at noon or whatever might be needed. Will you need to come to the office if there is something urgent or does that not happen in your job?

2. I am going to an interview later today and debating between pants and skirt suit. Both are dark appropriate colors. Government job on the west coast. Pant suit probably looks sharper, but both are well-tailored and good quality (Theory/Boss). Skirt suit is more conservative and safer bet though, right? Fairly senior attorney, but used to practicing in very conservative courts, so not sure if I am thinking about it right. Or does this just not matter? :)

   1. I’m not on the west coast (SEUS), but I think either are fine at this point. When I started practicing (nearly 20 years ago now) the rule seemed to be skirt suits for women for interviews, but I think a lot has changed in those 20 years.

      1. Either is 100% fine. I’d go with the one that you think looks better on you and/or in which you’re more comfortable.

   2. Pants. The west coast is not where looking conservative will get you points.

      1. I would not necessarily assume that for all industries on the west coast…know your industry/company.

      2. +1

         I agree with pants out West.

         And let’s get with the times. Men wear pants. We should wear pants. The last thing I want is someone looking at my bare legs during an interview.

         What is your industry?

   3. The West Coast is large. I’m in Silicon Valley in law and whatever makes you feel more confident should be fine, at least from my experience. I can’t imagine anyone caring around here.

   4. Thanks all. I went with a skirt and hose, and was glad I did because it was two older white males interviewing me in what appeared to be a conservative, local government environment.

      I really like this pant suit I have, but I generally hate pants and am more comfortable in a skirt suit anyways.

      1. I also wore my wedding ring after debating it a lot. :/

         1. You did great. Silence the inner critic. Sounds like you looked fantastic, presented well, and were completely honest with who you were. Don’t look back and be proud of yourself.

3. I originally posted this in the wrong spot on the morning thread and then got stuck in mod the rest of the day. I’m re-posting now for some more ideas. Thanks to the one person that responded. It was very helpful.

   Question about therapy. I’m struggling to articulate it in a tl/dr so I’ll give you a bit of the back story. I currently think I need to see a therapist about my infertility, failed IVF, and planning what I want to do going forward. That said, I recognize that grief in such a situation is normal. My MO with prior life events is to repress everything, convince myself and everyone else I’m fine until I’m not and then have anxiety attacks and finally go to therapy to deal with it. I’m trying to avoid repeating that cycle.

   So I was super upset last week with the failed IVF result and found a therapist and made an appt for next week. In the meantime, I’m feeling a lot better. I’m going away for this holiday weekend and the goal was to put a lot of this behind me and distract myself for awhile. I feel like the weekend will be restorative and I’ll be in a better place, come back, go to therapy, and it will just rip all of those scabs off and undue the healing I have already done.

   So, how do you balance moving forward from something while still doing therapy to correctly process it?

   1. I don’t know about you, but I always feel better when I am taking action to fix my problems. In your situation, I would be feeling better right now because I had taken a proactive step to help myself. If I didn’t actually go, I would feel worse again. Is it possible something similar is going on with you? In which case you will not be “in a better place only to rip off all those scabs,” but you’ll be in a situation where you are currently dealing with a problem in a positive way and you will be in a place where you just need to continue on that path.

      It sounds like you’re doing all the right things both in making the appointment and in planning a restorative weekend. It’s not one or the other. Think of it as all part of the plan. I’m sorry you are going through this. Big hugs.

   2. I think it will be okay to talk from wherever you are after the holiday weekend. I wouldn’t make myself rip off the scabs and revisit the wound that occasioned the appointment. I would start with “here’s where I’m at right now today, and these are my goals and concerns moving forward.” As for the past, it sounds like you have a general pattern you can talk about without revisiting any one experience.

   3. I say this with so much kindness: it feels like you’re working around your pain and not through it. You have to work through it and that requires therapy.

      1. Yep, this.

      2. Thank you and you are right.

      3. I wrote a long reply on the morning thread that unfortunately went to mod – you might check back later in the day to see if there are other comments as well.

         But this comment is basically what I said in my earlier comment. I think therapy will help you learn to sit with these feelings and make it less about a linear process of “moving forward”. Good luck!

         1. Found it and appreciate it!

   4. For me, the self care, weekend away stuff helped with the short term grief. It was therapy though that helped me make peace with the long term change.

      Therapy also helped me acknowledge that there would be a little piece of me that would always want to have another baby, while also knowing that my reality was now different than that. The fact that I can even admit that now is a testament to where I’ve been.

      Hugs to you. My journey has been much different than yours but reach out if you ever would like just to vent.

   5. Also said with kindness–feeling better about a situation, or putting it behind you isn’t necessarily the same as healing from/working through the underlying issues. For example, lets say I’m feeling better about a break up that happened 3 months ago (time passed, I’ve gone on a few dates, spent time with friends…) but the underlying depression and anxiety triggers are still there for me, causing sadness, and will come back with a vengeance when I start the next relationship. Distinguish comfort from progress.

   6. Please check out Flo Living for your infertility. They really know a lot about this stuff and helped me get on a better track hormonally.

      1. This type of response is not helpful at all to people struggling with infertility unless they specifically ask your advice about what to do about infertility, specifically. The OP seems to be working with at least one medical professional (probably more) and has undoubtedly spent many hours googling, reading books, reading magazines, looking at message boards, etc. Infertility seems to be one of those problems that people think they can solve — less stress! stop trying! try this diet! adopt! acupuncture! — and it’s just not helpful to hear those unsolicited “solutions” when all you want to do is vent about how it feels or try to ask a question about some other aspect of the problem (like mental health, here).

   7. Infertility is a distant memory but I will never forget the feelings of hopelessness, depression and rage. It was the first issue I could not solve by studying or working harder, and it all felt so incredibly unfair. I did see a therapist and she was great. In fact, I was lucky to find her in a smallish town where her husband was a professor at a small college. She had been in an infertility group with Connie Chung in NYC 30 years ago and was the only therapist I could find who did not engage in Christian-based therapy. Although I am Christian, that was just not the approach I needed. Anyway, here are my take-aways from therapy:
      1. It is not a spa service. Be prepared to leave feeling worse than you did when you arrived. Some days I would feel fine then talking about the issue would bring up all the bad feelings to the point of feeling miserable.
      2. However, I learned some very constructive ways to deal with feeling worse than I’d ever experienced. Specifically, she had me write down how I felt at the exact same time every day for a week. Let’s say 5PM. It seemed ridiculous but it reminded me that I technically was not always miserable.
      3. She flat out promised me that I would be cured and absolutely feel better once I had a child, no matter the course. She said that EVERY single person from her big NYC infertility group was fine once the end goal was achieved, whether through conception/delivery, adoption, whatever. I held onto to that like a security blanket.
      4. My internal medicine doctor prescribed prozac which I did not like at all. Basically I felt exactly the same except physically numb. I quit taking it after a month.
      5. This was before I understood the power of exercise. If I had understood that I should take a 30 minute walk every single morning NO MATTER WHAT, that would have helped enormously.
      When my third procedure finally worked, it took me about four weeks to calm down. Then one day I was riding down the road and thought, I feel normal again. As in, not depressed. I cancelled the therapist and tried to put thoughts of a miscarriage out of my mind. Good luck to you. It is an incredibly tough road but so worth it. xoxo

4. I don’t have personal experience with infertility but do have a close family member who is dealing with it. From what I have seen you can’t just get over infertility, it is something you are going to continue to think about and struggle with in the future though the level of pain and hurt might go up and down. I think going going to therapy is a great idea to help work on the infertility issue and also to improve how you approach other stresses. I also know that it can take a while to find the right therapist so getting started on that process sooner than later is good. If you attempt to do IVF again, you’ll have a good resource and support in place.

5. PSA for anyone tempted to sign a contract without reading: we were reviewing our offer documents this morning and…the realtor had inserted a purchase price 15k too high! Ugh!

6. I used to buy only Paul Green boots. They lasted forever, though after 2 seasons I would need to put in inserts. I haven’t bought any the last two years because I haven’t liked the styles, but I used to always have good experiences with them.

7. Looking for suggestions on casual jacket for summer evenings besides classic jean jacket and athlesiure.

   1. A field jacket (like an army green kind of deal) no also like white denim jackets.

      1. I’d love to buy this one.

         https://www.everlane.com/products/womens-modern-utlty-jkt-surplus?collection=womens-outerwear

      2. I have this one from Old Navy. https://oldnavy.gap.com/browse/product.do?cid=74688&pcid=55474&vid=1&pid=437889002

         1. Thank you for this rec! I just ordered one too – so glad it comes in Tall sizes.

         2. I really like this one in pink! Thanks for the link.

   2. I got a satin bomber jacket at Zara a few months ago and have been getting so much mileage out of it.

   3. LJ LJ LJ! Fake leather jacket or real! Or if it’s not cool enough, black waxed denim in a moto cut!

8. Bomber style in a dressy fabric or non-traditional color. Cotton moto jacket. Possibly a sweater jacket depending on color and weight . For example, I have a white cotton zip-up sweater (large really loose open knit) in a “hoodie” style from LL Bean that I got a few years ago and have lived in .

9. I have a pair of Paul Green flats that are my 2-years-on workhorse shoes because I love them so much, but they do squeak and have from the start. Nothing I’ve done has fixed it.

10. I have a pretty organized computer with lots of subfolders and need to switch from one to the next project frequently. I just changed my file manager from having to doubleclick to open a file/subfolder to single click. Hovering over sth selects the file. Takes a moment getting used to but I can already feel it’s a game changer.
    (I saw this on a colleague’s computer, who runs linux I believe, so it may be default there)

11. Is a black top with a crew neckline and a lace inset in the chest area appropriate for a fairly formal work environment? Cleavage is covered by solid part of top, not lace. For wear under cardigan or blazer.

    1. It sounds fine to me, as long as the lace is not even close to the boobies, as long as you don’t have a schlub accountant/office manager like Frank working there b/c he will go out of his way to check out the lace and in the process, rub against places only your husband or fiancee should have access to, if you understand my meaning. FOOEY on that! What a shame that we cannnot wear any lace w/o certain slobs taking advantage of the situeation, even tho they are married and their wives very likeley provide them with all the stimuleation they need at home. DOUBEL FOOEY!

    2. I don’t think it would be totally inappropriate, but I tend to think lace (especially black, red, or white lace) doesn’t look super professional. It is always a bit suggestive of lingerie. I would avoid if possible.

    3. I wouldn’t.

12. I have had two pairs of Paul Green shoes and both have been super comfy.

13. Choosing color is always a challenge.

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