Dear Liz,

I am a massive fan of your work and the Human Workplace movement. I can’t believe the career situation I find myself in but I know you can help me.

I stopped college halfway through to take a job with a family friend who had a business cleaning offices, schools and government buildings. The business grew. The owner sold the business to Mike, who is an important character in my story!

Mike said he would pay for the second half of my degree which was really nice of him. I got a year and half into my second two years of college while working full-time for Mike.

We grew the business ten times or more. We started doing lawn care and carpet cleaning. We added a snow removal team. Annual sales went up to $10m per year.

Mike taught me the business. His own kids were not interested in it. At the end of my next-to-last semester in college, Mike was diagnosed with cancer. I ran the business for him. Every time I saw him he said “Thank you so much for everything you do.”

I was paid well but of course I wasn’t paid a CEO’s salary. I took care of our accounts, brought new accounts in and managed the business so that Mike could get better. I never finished my last semester of college, or at least that hasn’t happened so far, so I have great work experience but no degree.

Mike asked me many times if I wanted to buy the business from  him. He was willing to finance the sale and let me work it off, but this business is not my passion. At 31 I knew I was young to be managing the business by myself but I had gained the respect of the team and our clients over 11 years.

Hi Liz,

My wife asked me a question that I knew you could answer. I’m interviewing for a new job right now and it’s going pretty well I would say. I’m getting some of the interviews on my own and others through two recruiters I have worked with before.

I haven’t had any job offers yet but I haven’t missed out on any, either. I’m just working my way through several processes and staying in the neutral zone as you advise. My wife’s question was “Since our daughter’s wedding is in October and it’s not a date we can move, shouldn’t you tell these employers about it?”

In a way it’s a delicate question because I don’t want to act like I think I already have the job, but I do want them to know that obviously I have to be at my daughter’s wedding.

That is still six months away but it wouldn’t surprise me if some of these companies are slow enough to get their ducks in a row that it takes until April first before I have my new job, or later than that. I’ve been in each of these interview pipelines for weeks already and it looks like it will be weeks more before things are resolved.

What is the polite way to say “Here’s one more thing you need to know before hiring me?” Should I tell the recruiter to tell the two companies he’s working with about my family obligation, or should I tell the hiring managers directly?

If any of them would not want to hire me because I have to miss a week of work six months from now, that would be a red flag for me, but I know that a lot of companies don’t give you any paid vacation time until you’re working for a year.

What do you suggest?

When I became a mom for the first time I didn’t know anybody who was working and nursing. I had to bring a pump to work and pump milk a couple of times a day. I had twins in my first pregnancy, so I was full of milk. If I didn’t pump milk in the morning and the afternoon, I’d be very uncomfortable and the milk would start to spill out and destroy my silk blouses.

I had a private office, so I was lucky. There was no internet in 1993, so I called the local HR association and asked them what they knew about breastfeeding at work. “Some companies have lactation rooms,” they said. “If they don’t have lactation rooms that moms can use to pump milk, they have their moms pump in the ladies room.”

I checked out the ladies room in our office. It had a tile floor. The only electrical outlet was under one of the sinks. If you wanted to pump milk in the ladies room, you’d have to sit under the sink on the cold file floor with your breasts exposed to anybody who pushed open the door to walk in.

We set up the world’s simplest lactation room.

It was a converted broom closet, but it did the trick. People who worked white-collar jobs where they could get up from their desks and take a pumping break twice a day could use the room. Hourly employees standing on our assembly lines couldn’t do that so easily. They needed somebody to replace them for the half an hour or so the pumping break would take.

This is a big problem, I said. It’s biology. Sticky human topics are my favorite part of HR, because they vex us and are hard to talk about. Twenty-one years after I started out as a milk producer, tons of companies still don’t support their breastfeeding moms. I don’t blame them for being confused.

Have you ever seen a billboard on the highway that said “Breastfeeding moms need a place to pump!” Neither have I.

When it comes to sticky human topics, you can’t find many topics that are stickier than breastfeeding. The milk itself is sticky, and the fact that it comes out of women’s breasts makes the topic even stickier. We are used to thinking of breasts as sexual things, but of course in the rest of the animal kingdom they are simple food sources.

Pediatricians recommend breastmilk as the best possible food for babies, but a mom with a full-time job may find it very tough to nurse her little one. When you nurse, you have to pump when you’re away from the baby, or your milk will dry up......