Weddingbee boards

Hello Bees! I am thrilled to delurk myself as i just became engaged 12/31/07::::pauses for congratulations::: LOL. Anyway, I am pretty sure you all are just the ladies to help me out. I work for a government agency and I am wondering if I should tell my boss directly that I have become engaged. I have only shared this news with a few select employees who have yet to spread the news. i hesitate bc my direct boss is male, and basically, i doubt he would care. But the director (his boss) is my former direct boss (she was promoted). Should i tell her? If I tell her I know she will instantly want to know about when we plan to do it. My FI recently moved and is now 900 miles away so clearly I will be moving eventually too. She is very calculated and will be thinking about my replacement and all the work she will want me to complete before I leave. which i interpret as cold....and I honestly don’t want to deal with that right now. OR the long list of action items she will come up with. Do I tell just him? just her? or both? Do I let the bosses hear about it through the office grapevine? What do you think I should do? What did you do?  

ok....as i sat here waiting for responses, i thought my best bet would be to get our Executive Asst opinion. She's been with the agency since the beginning, so she knows....

Her advice was to skip my direct boss....but tell the director. Since she is the one who hired me.

 So...I did. And Director was pleasant. Said she loved my ring...then asked me when we were thinking of doing it.

I told her maybe late this year. Then she said, "Now he lives in "far away city", right?" and I told her he did. She asked if he would be staying there. and I told her that we were not sure as his contract is up in September for renewal.

 kinda painful, but not as bad as i expected it to be. I feel like I did the right thing.......

Thanks!

I think you handled it well.  I was going to suggest telling them but not giving a definitive answer about who is moving where... even though you have decided that you will move, they don't need to know that.  For all they know, your fiance could move back to where you live.  I would not let them know about your decision to move until maybe a couple of months before you're moving.  8 weeks is more than generous in terms of giving notice; most places only expect you to give 2 weeks.

Babagrlshell, I'm not sure it's in an employee's best interest to let a boss know about their plans to leave the company if they are not planning on leaving yet.  Yes it's business and it would be helpful for the business to have ample time to replace you.  But business is cold, as you mentioned yourself, and letting a boss know that you intend to quit at a later date makes you disposable to the company.  You become less valuable in the meantime.  You sacrifice possible pay raises, promotions and respect from coworkers.  They may find a replacement for you early and then fire you before you intend to leave.  Big businesses look out for themselves and their numbers first, not their employees, so employees have to look out for themselves.  That sometimes means keeping secrets from the bosses, but that is just playing the office politics game, and the bosses are playing that game too.

I agree on holding off disclosing moving plans until they are more firm.  At this point - anything could happen.  He could move, you could move, you could both move!  Your bosses don't need to start making decisions based on something that 'could' happen :)

Congratulations!

babagrlshell - I do agree with that.  When I quit my previous job I was able to give them 5 weeks notice and they sure did appreciate it because they only just found someone at the end of the 4th week and then the new girl had to give notice at her job, so they were without someone for one week.  Giving more than 2 weeks notice is good if you can manage it, but I would never give several months of "vague" notice with no firm plans in place.

I see no problem with telling coworkers you're engaged though!  It just seemed like this was a special case because the engagement was possibly synonymous with announcing you will be leaving your company.

Be happy and spread the news about your engagement to who you feel comfortable with. You can use "its too early to tell" excuse  or " we plan on a long engagement" until they stop asking (or you figure out what you're dong).