Monday, June 09, 2008

How to tell your boss that you're pregnant


There are a few rare times when you are obligated to get personal with your boss. Announcing that you are pregnant is one of them, and it can be a daunting task when faced with possible discrimination.

Suddenly assumptions are made about you: your physical appearance will change, your mental and emotional state may be affected, and you will be taking a maternity leave - meaning that your team is down a person for an extended period of time and there's nothing your manager can legally do about it. It might not be the happiest of news for your manager to hear, but here are some ways to mitigate their concerns from early on.

Never ever tell your boss that you are trying to conceive. If you have any common sense you won't tell your boss (or coworkers for that matter) that you are trying to get pregnant. You can work around it if it comes up in casual conversation by saying "someday we want kids" or changing the subject by talking about the things you want to do before you start a family. On a rare occasion your manager may be cool about it, but you never know, and you don't want to have speculation going around (and getting passed up on new opportunities at work), so play it safe and keep this kind of personal info to yourself. Who knows, it could take months or years to get pregnant and you don't want your coworkers to try and plan around it.

Wait as long as you possibly can to tell your boss. After you find out you're pregnant, keep this "secret" to yourself. Err on the side of caution because it's possible that you may result in a miscarriage (doctors estimate that up to 30% of pregnancies do). Even if everything appears healthy with the pregnancy there's no reason to have this news floating around for eight months or so and giving your manager more leeway to second-guess your worth on the team or what projects to assign to you. If you have morning sickness, try to control it and make up excuses if needed ("there must be a bug floating around" or "I'm on a new diet") until it's absolutely necessary to tell. For most women this is when you start really showing (as far along as 4-5 months if it's your first). Until then reserve your excitement and discussion about having a baby with your close friends and family, as hard as it may be!

The announcement: Think before you speak. So you've held it in for several weeks or months and now you're ready to tell your boss. Time it around a successful completion of a project or milestone. Give your boss every impression that you will be as willing and capable as ever to work at the same level, and have an idea for how much maternity leave you plan to take. This will show your manager that you are responsible and will put them more at ease with your leave time. And by all means don't exacerbate the whole situation after you've made the announcement by bringing up your growing belly at every conversation with coworkers. This could lead to casual sexism in the workplace, especially from men. You will get enough attention as it is, and you want to show that you can gracefully juggle your professional career with your not-so-personal-anymore life situation. 

With any luck your manager will be more excited about your announcement than worried, and he/she will feel confident that you will be as productive and valuable an employee as ever. And, of course, try not to stress yourself out too much about it all because in the end it's a natural process that many working women successfully make it through (and extra stress isn't good for the baby anyway).

If you're at all like me and feel you've made the most of your early twenties, your late twenties can be an exciting time for starting a family. After all the average age in the U.S. for having your first child is 25, and you're not getting any younger!
Posted by Melanie Lopez at 22:05:09 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Friday, February 15, 2008

Strange item requests at work


It’s Friday and I wanted to add some humor to today’s post. Every now and then people ask me if they can borrow an office supply, maybe a stapler or a pen or a chair.  And then sometimes there are strange requests and you’re not sure why they request them, or just get a kick out of it. Here are a couple strange requests I’ve had.

Do you have a comb and scissors? A coworker once asked me because she was due for a haircut. She has long hippie hair and lives by herself so I guess to her it would be obvious to have someone at work trim it for her.

Do you have a flashlight? My boss asked around for a flashlight recently and when I later asked why he said that his doctor wanted him to look at his throat and tell him over the phone what it looked like. He was embarrassed to ask one of his team members to look down his throat so he took a flashlight into the bathroom and looked for himself.

Do you have any extra shoes? This was actually a request from me. One day early in my career I was wearing some cheap sandals with heavy soles when suddenly the straps ripped apart from the soles while I was coming back from the bathroom. I hobbled over to my coworker (who happened to be hippie gal) and asked her if she had any extra shoes. To my delight she had an extra pair of pumps in her file cabinet.

Do you have any interesting or strange requests from coworkers?

Posted by Melanie Lopez at 10:54:31 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |