It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. My boss wants me to push my crew harder — but then he undermines me
My boss is always pressuring me to push my crew harder and enforce rules with more diligence. We primarily use write-ups (document containing description of offense, number of “points,” and signatures of acknowledgement from employee/supervisor/director) to keep track of the path of disciplinary action (warnings, suspension, termination) for various offenses (attendance, insubordination, job performance, attitude). As a supervisor of 20-40 employees per night, there are often many reasons to submit write-ups. These write-ups need to then be reviewed by the director before they are put on paper and physically issued and signed/acknowledged by associates.
However, when I push discipline upon some employees (namely, experienced veterans of the job), my boss insists on giving them a one-on-one talking-to in place of the write-up, meaning they are essentially provided a free pass on one of their points or write-ups. This doesn’t usually provide long-term changes within an employee.
Other associates quickly become disgruntled when they see their equals not receiving the same disciplinary action as themselves for similar offenses. Professionally, I can only tell them to “just continue to worry about themselves.”
Is my director softer than me? Is this maybe a morale tactic I’m not understanding? Why can he get away with letting it slide but nobody else can? How can I feel comfortable providing discipline knowing that their equals might not receive the same consequences?
The whole system is bad. You’re managing adults, not children. You should both be using one-on-one conversations with everyone, not just your veterans. If you find yourself having repeated conversations with someone about problems and those problems are serious ones, then yes, go down your path of disciplinary action. But all those write-ups are infantilizing.
I realize this doesn’t solve your problem — that your boss is pushing you to manage one way while he manages a different way — but really, the whole system is bad. That said, you can talk to your boss to try get better aligned on how to handle this stuff. Say something like, “I’ve noticed you push me to more aggressively enforce our rules, but I’ve also noticed you often make exceptions for veteran employees. I want to make sure we’re both using the same system, so can we talk through how you want all of this to work?” You can also say, “Some workers become demoralized when their mistakes are treated differently than their colleagues. If we want to do that, can we make it explicit that people who have been here longer and performed well over time do get more latitude?” (There’s no reason you can’t have a system that builds that leeway into it, but you should be transparent with people about how it works so it doesn’t seem arbitrary.)
2. Shift leader’s ring tone is a wolf whistle
I work in a fast-paced food service field, and our shift leaders are often covering more than one location at a time. They need to be able to receive texts from workers at the other locations and respond to them quickly, so their phones are usually close to them even when working with customers.
One of the leaders is a bit older than the rest of us — I think he’s in his 40s while most of the non-leader staff are in our 20s. This is only relevant because he cites his age and hearing as a reason to have his text alert set to a very loud volume. He’s used a couple different sounds since we’ve been working together, but he keeps coming back to one in particular: that two-toned cat call whistle you might recognize from cheesy movies, or cheesy guys on the street imitating it. Every time I hear it, I freeze up. I’ve tried to chill out about it, but my first thought is always: some guy is about to make a gross comment about my body. Our staff is mostly female, and I know I’m not the only one who has this reaction to it.
I have a decent rapport with this shift leader, so I’ve asked him to change it before. I tried to explain why it made me and other workers, and possibly customers, uncomfortable, but he didn’t seem to get it. He did try out a train whistle noise for a while, but he says the wolf whistle is the easiest noise for him to hear, and I guess that trumped my concerns, because it’s back.
Should I try to talk to his supervisor about this? We’re a small arm of a larger system and HR is based in another city, so I could email them but they are very hands-off and everything from them gets filtered through this top supervisor, to the shift leaders, to the rest of us. I don’t know that I’d call it sexual harassment, per se, but I’m not sure what else would get this issue handled in a serious way.
I’d try one more time with him since you have good rapport and he did change it for a while. I’d use this language: “I know we’ve talked about this before, and I appreciated you changing it, but it’s back. Can I ask you to change that ring tone permanently? For many women, including me, that ring tone is the sound of sexual harassment, and it’s very distracting and unnerving to hear it throughout the day at work.”
If that doesn’t work, then it’s reasonable to talk to his supervisor, framing it in the same way. You can be clear that you’re not reporting him for sexual harassment; you’re asking for assistance with something he’s misunderstanding that’s making at least some women deeply uncomfortable.
3. Can I ask my coworkers to stop talking so much about the coronavirus?
I work on a team of fewer than 10 employees. Like many people, I have recently been assigned to work from home. I have issues with anxiety, and it has been going haywire due to recent events. One thing I have started doing is only looking at the news at the beginning and end of each day. This has proven helpful on weekends, when I’m away from work. But on weekdays, the virus is a frequent topic of conversation over the team IM and text messages. Ignoring the messages isn’t an option because I need to check them regularly in case there is anything I need to take care of. Would it be unreasonable for me to ask them to avoid any virus-related chatter unless it is work-related, or to ask them to create a separate group and text message to discuss it?
It’s tricky to ask coworkers to avoid all discussion of a topic that’s on so many people’s minds — and affecting work so directly — because for many people, being able to discuss it is as anxiety-relieving for them as it is anxiety-producing for you. But yes, asking them to create a separate venue for it is a good idea, and probably more feasible. You could say, “I’m finding it really stressful to have so many messages about the virus during the workday. Would you be willing to put it on a separate group so people who want it have a place for it and people like me can opt out?” (Who knows, you might find other people would be happy to be able to opt out too.)
4. My employee is using way too much hand sanitizer
My office has been deemed an essential service, so we are still going in. We have plenty of hand soap, hand sanitizer, and cleaning supplies for now, but obviously some of those items will be nearly impossible to restock in the short term.
I have an employee who started just before the COVID-19 situation hit the U.S., and he is honestly over-using our limited supply of hand sanitizer. He will pump multiple pumps into his hands so they are literally dripping with sanitizer, and other staff members have said they have seen him putting it on his face.
I have no idea how to address this in light of the situation. I really do not want to tell someone that they have to use less sanitizer right now, but he is over-using something that is a limited supply and effectively wasting it, as that volume is just not necessary. It’s not a cost issue, if I could order more, I would just ignore the behavior but — do I say something? Or no? And if yes, how on earth do you have that conversation right now?
Ugh, yeah, you don’t want to sound like you’re limiting his ability to protect himself, but if he’s genuinely over-using it (not just by a little, but by a lot), it’s legitimate to worry about running out and not being able to get more, given the current shortages.
So maybe: “Joe, the last thing I want to do is discourage anyone from using hand sanitizer right now and I fully understand the urge to use a lot of it. But because our supply of it is so limited, I’m concerned when I see you using so much more than the recommended amount each time. This isn’t a cost issue — I would happily purchase as much as we need — but there is a shortage of it and it is going to be very hard to restock right away when we run out. If there’s context I don’t have, let’s talk that through, but otherwise can I ask you to stick to the recommended amount, which is one pump per use?”
(Replace “one pump” with whatever the manufacturer’s directions are on your particular sanitizer. They can vary, so you’d want to check that first.)
5. My boss wants me to do my hobby as a gift for a client
I’m a marketing coordinator and photographer for a residential interior designer. I also do watercolor on the side in my spare time as a hobby. My boss adores my watercolor projects and asked me to watercolor the exterior of a clients home to give them as a gift.
How do I navigate this monetarily? All the painting supplies (paper, paint, brushes) are my own. Should I be getting paid as a normal salary employee PLUS an additional fee for the time/painting?
Your company should pay for your supplies and your time. If they have you do it as part of your regular work hours, you might choose to consider it part of your work for them and not charge anything additional. Or, if the charge for this kind of work would generally be much higher than your normal wages, it’s reasonable to say, “The fees I’ve seen for this kind of work are around $X. Since I don’t normally do this professionally, how about (number slightly less than X)?” Or you can skip the discount if your work is professional quality.
And either way, you shouldn’t incur any cost for doing this, so definitely talk to your boss about what the supplies will cost and how to get reimbursed for that.
can I ask coworkers not to talk about coronavirus, wolf whistle ring tone, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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