Category: Comstock

My business is quite seasonal. We have work year round, but in the off-season we don’t need the same number of employees. It’s just not profitable to keep everyone on the payroll 12 months out of the year. Can I drop hours? Can I lay people off and

I’m a corporate recruiter. For candidates that progress to an HR phone screen, we ask their expected salary and share the range we have for the role. Is it appropriate to use someone’s low salary expectations as a reason for not moving forward? For example, I was recruiting

We are a 30-agent real estate brokerage company with one administrative assistant, our lone employee. She has been with us for more than 30 years and is loyal and cheerful, and always answers the phone with a smile. However, her professional abilities have not kept pace with the

I am the chief human resources officer of a startup and live with a fellow co-founder. Without telling me, he invited one of our interns over to our house for reasons unrelated to work. While they are just playing Pokémon, I feel I am in an awkward position.

I have a client who recently threatened to quit working with us after seeing politically-charged posts she deemed offensive on one of my account manager’s social media accounts. I’ve asked the employee not to let this happen again, but he countered that we have no policy in place

We drug test new hires at my company. When a potential employee’s test comes back positive it’s easy enough to rescind the offer, but we had a candidate have a test returned “negative but diluted” and we rescinded the offer. The candidate had already given two weeks’ notice

I have an employee who hasn’t been performing well. She always has an excuse. Last week, she was out sick again and I needed a report that I know she’d received from a client. I tried to call her, but she didn’t answer. So, I asked IT if

I recently received a promotion, so two months ago I hired “Jane” to assume the role of my former position. Since she’s been here, Jane has constantly undermined me. She has told lies about my character and my productivity to other employees. It is quite obvious that she

Yesterday, I was an individual contributor who did technical work. This morning, a group of my coworkers and I found out that we are now expected to manage about 10 non-exempt staff each. Overnight! There’s no title change, no increase in salary — just added work and stress.

I am an inside sales representative for a medical device company. I work hard to build relationships over the phone to sell and consult on products with doctors. When I was hired, the president of the company specifically told me this was not a telemarketing job. Recently, I