It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. My employee gave her puppy the same unusual name as a coworker’s new baby
A team member has just announced she’s getting a puppy and naming him Pluto, which, though an unusual name, is the same name of another team member’s baby. (“Pluto” isn’t the real name, but it’s a similar degree of unusualness.) We are a small team of 10, and Pluto is the first and only baby anyone on the team has had.
She didn’t mention anything to her colleague before making this decision, and announced it in a team (Zoom) meeting. We were all stunned. As her manager, should I address it? The two already have a fairly tenuous relationship and I hope this won’t tip it over the edge!
Oh dear.
I’m a big believer that you don’t really get dibs on names. If she wants to name her dog Pluto and a coworker already has a baby named Pluto … well, she gets to do that. If her coworkers think it’s weird and want to judge her for it, they also get to do that.
However, if your sense is that she named the dog after the baby as a way to needle her coworker, it’s time to intervene in whatever is going on in that relationship. At that point, it’s not about the dog’s name; it’s about whatever is going on more broadly. You can’t have two people on your team not getting along and at least one needling the other, and that’s where I’d focus.
2. My coworker works all night
I have been helping to train a colleague at the same level as myself for five months. She came to us from a very similar role, but we quickly found she lacks basic skills that are key to any office job (email and calendar management), as well as the critical thinking and problem solving skills necessary to do a quality job in this role.
I have developed extensive training materials for her, spent hours providing intense and personalized coaching, and been available for questions. Since the pandemic started, my boss has taken a more hands-on approach with her, which is good because I don’t know how I would handle the intensity with which she needs to be monitored and coached, and my own increased workload, along with general pandemic-related stress.
I recently learned (through email time stamps, and her own admission) that she is routinely working well into the evening, and has twice stayed up until the middle of the night trying to get caught up on work. I am very familiar with the role, and I can say with certainty that there is no way her workload could justify this. These actions reek of debilitating work anxiety to me. I reached out to her, expressing my concern that this is unsustainable, offering my support as a person to talk to, and offering to give advice if she could tell me what some of the particular “time sucks” she is dealing with are. She did respond, but we didn’t really have a productive conversation. My impression is that she thinks this is a silly little quirk and that she will feel better if she can get caught up. I can tell from emails received the following evening that she was working at least three hours extra.
Should I give our supervisor a heads-up about this? Here is the wrinkle: I do not trust my supervisor to handle this in an appropriate, sensitive, or productive manner. While she does occasionally surprise me, her default mode is a barking hot head who blows up every issue that comes across her desk. Her language and manner are often abusive, to the point where I have considered filing a complaint many times, and am mulling over turning down a promotion if it would mean working more closely with her. How do you think I should proceed?
Ugh. If you had a decent manager, I’d tell you to share your concerns with her — all of them, but including the number of hours your coworker is having to work to keep up (especially if the company legally needs to pay her overtime but she’s not reporting it).
But a bad manager of the sort you described? If that’s the case, I’d lean toward staying out of it. You offered your coworker help, she declined, and you can reasonably decide to leave it there if you want to.
My one caveat is that because you’re helping to train her, you do have an obligation to keep your boss in the loop if her progress isn’t what it needs to be. It’s possible that “working all night and still not meeting the bar we need” is info your boss needs to fully understand what’s going on. That said, it also sounds like your boss has seen enough to know what the general situation is — so my ultimate answer hinges on how much you think knowing about the long hours would add to your boss’s overall understanding of how your coworker is doing in the role.
3. Not applying for an internal opening because I dislike the new manager
I applied for a new position within my company a few months ago and wasn’t hired for it, but the hiring manager at the time strongly encouraged me to apply again the next time they posted a similar job. However, since then, the original hiring manager was promoted and a new manager was hired to replace him. I have worked with the new manager (not as a direct report) in the past and really do not get along with him, and I don’t foresee us having a good relationship if I do apply again and manage to get the job (not a guarantee because I don’t think he likes me any more than I like him!).
My current manager is very supportive and has definitely pushed for me as a good candidate for the new role. I don’t know how to diplomatically let him know that I don’t want to work for this new manager, and I’m worried that anything I say to explain it will blow back on me in some way. Can you suggest any way to handle this tactfully?
Do you trust your manager to keep what you say to her in confidence or at least to represent your position diplomatically? If so, you could say, “Between you and me, I don’t have the same rapport with (new manager) that I had with (old manager) and I don’t think we’d work together as well.” Or: “The fit doesn’t seem as strong to me as it did when (old manager) was managing that role, so for now I’m going to hold off.”
If you don’t feel comfortable saying that to her, then you could just say, “For now I’d like to stay where I am, but I’m interested in watching what (new manager) does with the team, and maybe I’ll apply again down the road. Right now, though, I’m happy here.”
4. Coworker cc’s herself on every email she sends
One of my coworkers always cc’s herself on every email she sends me. My guess is that she wants to have everything in her inbox so she remembers to follow up, but often these emails are part of ongoing email chains, so she should have the most recent email in her inbox already. And, um, that is what the “sent” folder is for!
I will admit that every once in a while I will bcc (not cc!) myself on an email that I send, if it’s the type when the person I’m sending it to has a track record of dropping the ball, or if it’s extremely important. But she does it on every single email to me and to other coworkers. I don’t know if she does it to clients … I hope not!
It really irks me, probably for no good reason other than I can’t stand inefficiency in any form and it also seems a little bit demeaning, like she doesn’t trust me to take care of things and respond (which I always do). I’m assuming I can’t do anything about it, so I’ll get over it and try to ignore it. But I’m just wondering, is this common, and why do people do this?!?
You are overreacting. That’s fine, I’m all for having pet peeves! But this isn’t really a big deal. Some people do this because they have a mail rule set up where anything they’ve cc’d themselves on goes to a specific mail folder (like one where they track things they need to follow up on). I’d assume it’s connected to an organizational system that works for her, not that’s it any sort of commentary on whether she trusts you to do your job.
5. Listing a job when it was first through a temp agency, and then directly with the company
At the job I am currently at, I started out as a temp through a temp agency. After a little over a year of working there, I was hired by the company I was doing work for. Now I am job searching, and I was wondering if I needed to list my time as a temp and as an employee separately or if I could combine them.
You can combine them! Just make sure that you note somewhere that the first year was via an agency. That’s because if an employer calls to verify the job, your company may confirm your employment as having started once you became a non-temp — which could make it look like you had misrepresented the dates by a year. (That probably won’t happen if they talk to your actual manager, but it could happen if they talk to HR.)
You could list it this way:
Cocoa Analyst, Beverage Oceanarium, July 2017 – present
(July 2017 – August 2018 as a temp through Libations Staffing)
employee named her dog after a coworker’s baby, a coworker who works all night, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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