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Breaking Boundaries
Dear Work Friend,
My housekeeper has been working for me since 2019, a few hours every other week. Our relationship is very good but professional: I don’t know anything about her life. Nonetheless, if she needed me outside of a work context, I would want to be there for her.
To be clear, I don’t know her immigration status, only that she is not a native English speaker. But I worry that she could be profiled if ICE came to our city. How can I intimate to her that if she were in trouble, she could call me for help or support? Should I even say anything, or would it be overstepping?
— Anonymous
I can understand why you feel nervous about making this overture. As you describe it, you and your housekeeper have a model working relationship. There’s no confusion about what she’s being paid for (house cleaning), or about what you as her employer can expect (a clean house); there are no hidden obligations or expectations.
In this context, your offer — well-intentioned as it obviously is — is almost, by definition, “overstepping.” Telling your housekeeper that you want to provide aid and support would test your professional boundaries and complicate what has until now been a straightforward and mutually beneficial economic relationship. You run the risk of ruining the relationship, or at least of having a very awkward conversation: For all you know, she supports ICE’s deportation mandate.
But there are times when overstepping can be warranted. Strong professional boundaries are valuable to the extent that they ward off unfair and unpaid obligations between employers and employees. But we should be mindful of those boundaries preventing us from fulfilling other obligations to each other, as neighbors and members of a community.
In fact, the well-established clarity of your professional relationship makes me feel much more comfortable at the prospect of your telling her she can count on you in an emergency. Since you’ve always respected her boundaries (and she yours), she can trust that your offer of help is genuine and free of obligation — and not an attempt to insinuate yourself into her life or otherwise confuse the nature of your relationship. And in turn, you can trust that she will take your offer seriously, given that you are pushing at an otherwise sacrosanct boundary.
The catch here is that “overstepping” to offer help is not license to run roughshod over her privacy. Don’t ask about her immigration status. Keep your overture short, simple and general: “I just want you to know, if you ever need help with anything — not just work things — you can call me anytime. I mean that.” (Presumably she has your cellphone number.)
And whatever you do, don’t pursue it further unless she asks to. As you say, you don’t know her status or the nature of her support networks. The point of offering aid is not to become her friend, advocate or sponsor, or to force yourself into her life outside your previously narrow professional relationship. Most likely, she’ll never take you up on the offer. But she’ll know the door is open if she needs it.
An Unsettling Job Interview
Dear Work Friend,
I am currently interviewing for vice president roles in nonprofits and higher education. I made it to a second round for one role that aligns well with my experience and qualifications, but the conversation, with the institution’s president, was very strange. She claimed that many members of her organization are “racist” (she is white) and that someone coming into this role, which leads institutional strategy, would need to “watch their back.” She told me she was hired for her leadership role because she is a member of a specific ethnoreligious group. And she told me that it would be challenging to hire me for the role I was interviewing for because we would be “two white women walking into the room” when we appeared together publicly. I do understand the importance of people in leadership identity-mirroring the community that the leader serves. But there are many relevant aspects of my identity that did not come up in the interview. For instance: I have a disability; I am a member of the L.G.B.T.Q. community; I speak a second language fluently that is very helpful for community work in New York. I am left with a frustrating sense that my experience and qualifications are not being properly considered, and that my full identity is not being taken into account by the interviewer.
I would love to get your perspective on this interview and hear whether there are any steps you suggest?
— Anonymous
I think the first step here would be to get a drink with a trusted friend so you can complain about it, if you haven’t already. Allow me to echo what I’m sure your friend would say: This was wildly unprofessional behavior on the part of the nonprofit’s president, and you are absolutely correct to feel frustrated and alienated by the conversation.
The second step would be to assess whether you want to take any further steps. If you really still want the job, you could email the president or the hiring committee to reaffirm your interest while referencing your richly diverse background and lived experience. You don’t owe anyone any disclosures, and it’s uncomfortably cynical to lean on your own identity categories in pursuit of a job, but cynicism seems to be this woman’s native language.
But … do you want this job? If you really aren’t being considered for the position because of the president’s dismissive ideas about your identity, it seems to me that you’re dodging a bullet. I can’t imagine that an organization run by a person who conducts interviews like that is a pleasant place to work. Setting aside her cynicism, anyone gossiping that freely to a job candidate probably doesn’t have the necessary tact or prudence to smoothly steer an organization.
If you’re still feeling troubled by the interview after venting to a friend (or several), and think the nonprofit president’s ranting about race and hiring reflected an actual pattern of bias or a dangerous incompetence (and not just the clumsy patter of a person with no filter), you should raise your concern more formally. You could consult with an employment lawyer given that the president seemed to provide evidence of racial preferences in hiring, though I suspect a protracted lawsuit or campaign would be more work, and possibly less effective, than a simple letter to the nonprofit’s board outlining the conversation and your concerns. If the nonprofit is really as toxic as the president herself seems to be saying, then you’re surely not the only person to have raised the alarm.
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