This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
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OTTAWA – A new report has discovered that Canadian Millennials can save an average of $1800 per year and dramatically improve their chances of home ownership simply by switching to making their morning coffee at a Starbucks franchise that they personally own. “These little daily sacrifices can really add up when you look at the […]
A study published in Nature Genetics that analyzed the genomes of more than 1 million people found sequences of DNA that could be linked to a disposition to cannabis addiction. What do you think?
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. Using tracking software to monitor employees
My employer uses tracking software to track remote workers. If they determine you “worked” less than seven hours in a day, you come up on a bad list and can get in trouble.
Thing is, these are exempt workers — mid and senior managers. And how long your mouse is moving on your laptop does not completely constitute the totality of time worked. Many of us work on our phones — especially after hours — attending calls, answering texts and emails and the like … and none of that is counted because there’s no tracking software on our phones.
What do you think of tracking hours “worked” for exempt employees in this manner?
That’s ridiculous. It makes no sense for any job that isn’t entirely focused around typing all day long. And even for those jobs, that kind of monitoring usually means you have management that doesn’t know how to manage; the way you know if people are working or not is by looking at their output, not by monitoring their every movement.
You should ask your manager how they’ll be accounting for the significant portions of your work that don’t take place on a computer.
2. Communicating with a coworker who works a different shift
I’m hoping to get your advice about communicating with coworkers who work different schedules. I’m in a team with two other people, one of whom works a completely opposite shift most of the time. She’s mainly assigned to the team to help when projects get really busy and has other duties that she also works on in the evenings.
Communicating with her can be hard because of the shift differences. Her shift starts a full hour after we’ve already left for the day, so we mostly have to rely on email or Teams messages for communication. Occasionally I’ll stay later to talk with her in person about what’s going on, but we’re paid hourly so have to get any schedule changes approved before doing so.
The issue is that she waits a day before reading and responding to emails or Teams messages. Due to our different schedules, this means that communicating with her takes a minimum of three days. This isn’t great when we’re deep in project season and our tasks are more time-sensitive. I’m not her supervisor so I’m unsure of how to approach this issue without sounding accusatory and I don’t want to ask her to just do the less interesting and less time-sensitive “clean up” parts of the projects, as that seems demoralizing.
Be matter-of-fact about it — treat it as a workflow issue, not a “you’re slacking” issue. For example: “Because our separate shifts mean we rarely get to talk in person, could you try to respond to email and Teams messages the day you receive them? Otherwise our schedules mean that it takes several days to communicate, which is really slowing down time-sensitive projects.”
If that doesn’t work, talk to your manager about what’s going on, since (a) it’s important that she know this is happening and (b) she can exercise authority that you can’t.
3. Time zone etiquette when interviewing
I work as a recruiter for a company based on the east coast of the U.S. We offer remote work and, for most positions, we will consider applicants from anywhere in the country. However, the majority of our employees are based out of our east coast office, and the company operates within east coast business hours.
Is it a red flag when candidates give their availability for interviews in a different time zone? I will frequently get candidates telling me they are available for an interview “any time after 3 pm PST” (i.e., after east coat business hours) or something similar. I can get past having to do the time zone switching (although truth be told, I do find it a bit off-putting), but I find it’s a bigger concern when candidates don’t take into account when their interviewers will likely be available. Among other things, we are looking for candidates who have good interpersonal and communication skills, and candidates who are actually okay with working east coast hours. Someone living in, say, Oregon, who doesn’t want to show up to a meeting because it’s at 6 or 7 am their local time is not going to work out, and I worry that not showing awareness of the time difference during the interview process might be a warning sign of this. Would love to know your thoughts.
I don’t think it’s a big red flag. People are used to giving times in their own time zones, and they don’t work for you yet. Plus, with the increase in remote work, they may not know that the people they’ll be meeting with are all on the east coast; after all, you’re interviewing them to work from the west coast, so it’s not implausible that you’d have other people around the country too. It would be better if they said something like, “Depending on what time zone the people I’m interviewing with are in, that may be too late in the day, in which case I could do XYZ instead” (and if they were writing to me, that’s what I’d recommend). But it’s not terribly worrisome that they’re not, as long as you don’t see other signs that they’ll resist working east coast hours.
Of course, you do need to be very explicit about the hours they’ll be expected to work in their time zone — and their reaction to that is where you should focus your assessment of how okay they are with that schedule.
4. Leading the charge for women’s shorts
I recently started working in an office that’s very casual for the first time as a mid-career employee. If someone showed up here in flannel pajama pants, it might be noteworthy, but it wouldn’t be a problem. It took me a few weeks to notice an unspoken rule — women do not wear shorts. Men wear shorts. Cargo shorts, mostly, but the occasional basketball shorts or more form-fitting shorts. But none of the women wear shorts. If I asked my manager about it, I’m sure he would say it was fine. It’s just … not done. It’s 100 degrees in the summer here. Should I lead the charge to bring women’s shorts into the workplace?
Yes.
5. My company keeps paying us late
I am based out of California. More than once, my work, which pays twice monthly, has been late to pay us. There is little to no notice. We are not high earners and most live paycheck to paycheck. Although I’ve been vocal about how this affects myself and the staff, nothing changes. What are my options moving forward besides finding a new job?
California is probably the most work-friendly state when it comes to enforcing employment laws, and particularly its paycheck law. Your state has — and is very willing to assess — strict penalties and fines on employers who pay employees late. You can file a complaint with the state department of labor here.
Javier Milei, a former economist and TV personality whom many have compared to Donald Trump both in his lack of political experience and brand of far-right politics, was elected president of Argentina this week. What do you think?
Amid their constant concern that the feminization of society is causing a decline in male fertility, The Onion asked men’s rights activists to explain how they increase their sperm count, and this is what they said.
MINNEAPOLIS—Insisting that the caregiver make herself at home, parents Greg and Sarah Meyer reportedly told 17-year-old babysitter Charlotte Kent on Wednesday to help herself to anything she wanted in the medicine cabinet. “So you have our numbers, you know that bedtime is 9 p.m., and after Natalie is down, definitely…
WASHINGTON—Shedding light on an experience common among commuters nationwide, a U.S. Department of Transportation study released Wednesday found that most honking drivers were just excited to see shiny cars. “Contrary to popular assumptions, our findings suggest that drivers mostly use their horns to express their…
Enlarge / Google is looking pretty dilapidated these days. (credit: Aurich Lawson)
Chrome's new adblock-limiting extension plan is still on. The company paused the rollout of the new "Manifest V3" extension format a year ago after an outcry over how much it would damage some of Chrome's most popular extensions. A year later, Google is restarting the phase-out schedule, and while it has changed some things, Chrome will eventually be home to inferior filtering extensions.
Google's blog post says the plan to kill Manifest V2, the current format for Chrome extensions, is back on starting June 2024. On that date (we'll be on "Chrome 127" by then), Google will turn off Manifest V2 for the pre-stable versions of Chrome—that's the Beta, Dev, and Canary channels. Google says, "Manifest V2 extensions [will be] automatically disabled in their browser and will no longer be able to install Manifest V2 extensions from the Chrome Web Store."
The timeline around a stable channel rollout is worded kind of strangely. The company says: "We expect it will take at least a month to observe and stabilize the changes in pre-stable before expanding the rollout to stable channel Chrome, where it will also gradually roll out over time. The exact timing may vary depending on the data collected, and during this time, we will keep you informed about our progress." It's unclear what "data" Google is concerned with. It's not the end of the world if an extension crashes—it turns off and stops working until the user reboots the extension. Maybe the company is concerned about how many people Google "Firefox" once their ad-blocker stops working.
WASHINGTON—Deciding it was finally time to call the race in favor of the Republican candidate, a reportedly exhausted President Joe Biden announced Tuesday that he was officially conceding the 2020 election to Donald Trump. “My fellow Americans, we fought long and hard for the presidency, but that journey ends here,…
EVANSTON, IL—Describing the objects with great affection, local middle school teacher Sasha Morrison told reporters Tuesday that she had formed a strong bond with the things that do standardized tests. “These little implements of filling in bubbles are some of the best I’ve ever had,” said Morrison, who was glowing…
If you are a mouse, this is the house for you. It is an almost cartoonish hole at the bottom of a white wall. It is warm. The owners are often gone. And, there is cheese!
“An anti-L.G.B.T.Q. group is organizing a boycott of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade over performances by nonbinary Broadway actors, in the latest attempt to force companies to reverse course on social issues that some far-right groups consider too liberal.” — New York Times
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As you may have heard, we at One Million Moms will be boycotting this year’s Macy’s parade because two performers from Broadway musicals are members of the so-called LGBTQ community. As good Christians from Mississippi, we cannot sit by and let a pair of LGBTQ musical theater professionals up there in New York City get away with singing and dancing in flashy costumes to carefully rehearsed choreography.
When we heard that out of the hundreds of Broadway performers showing their jazz hands to America, not one, but two of them would be of that persuasion, we knew we had to do something. Not being from New York and never having been to a Broadway show, we have a unique perspective on what theater should and shouldn’t be. Theater is the church Christmas pageant. It’s a lesser-known Osmond performing on a Tunica riverboat. It’s certainly not LGBTQ people swishing around dramatically while promoting social change through emotionally resonant songs.
It’s only two of them for now, but we’ve heard there could be more LGBTQ Broadway performers. As many as four or five, possibly. What if we reach the day when a majority of actors working on Broadway are LGBTQ? Or even just supportive of those who are? What would happen to the American theater if this hallowed industry became known for such a niche agenda? Shows that are about misunderstood witches or young people simply struggling to pay rent could turn into sneaky ways of slipping pro-LGBTQ messages to the public.
This whole matter is especially insulting when you consider this is a parade hosted by a clothing brand. So now we have LGBTQs ruining not only American musical theater and street marches, but also shopping? What are they going to do next, physically come into our homes? And then perfectly reappoint our tragic living rooms? Not on our watch.
If Macy’s goes through with this, we’re going to New York City and will search through all of the theaters, cabarets, and floor shows until we find these two individuals who think they have a right to be both openly expressive in the arts and openly LGBTQ. It may be hard to find them, but we have no doubt that the male casts of the various Broadway musicals will join forces with us. Those virile young lads who spend their days in the gym and their nights at tough guy bars with names like “Cock” and “Eagle” don’t want LGBTQ people giving their profession a bad name any more than we do.
So consider this your warning, Macy’s. You either tell the only two LGBTQ musical theater performers who’ll be appearing on this telecast to stay home Thursday morning, or we will make you very, very sorry. This is a dance-fight you cannot win.
If there is one universal shared experience that I can, with some confidence, claim all researchers share then it is the love of free food.
Be it biscuits, fruit, small strangely shaped corn things or sweets, every researcher feels the flutter of excitement at the addition of the word free before it. Since the very first days of my research career the prospect of free sandwiches or on very rare occasions, free vol-au-vents filled with grey stuff, was enough to improve any day of lectures.
I once had to attend a whole day of training on how to use our internal HR holiday booking system and I am reasonably confident that the only reason I didn’t strangle myself with my own tie was because they had a tray of Jaffa cakes.
Likewise, I remember sitting in my open plan office and feeling the excitement as across the hall a meeting finished and trays of biscuits and snacks were officially declared “for anyone”. There is nothing quite like seeing a room of 80 highly trained scientists pop up like meerkats from their cubicles.
Now the free food doesn’t need to be expensive. There is a law of diminishing returns with the amount of money spent on free food. Upgrading from a free bowl of Cadbury’s cream eggs to truffles hand rolled in Switzerland and transported to the conference on individual cushions might get a few more “oh wow”s but days later will still be reduced to “oh yeah we had free chocolates”.
As positive as all this is there is a very rare chance that giving out free food can go wrong. For example, anyone promising a “free lunch” that then offers a plate of biscuits and a basket of apples should be thrown in the nearest hazardous waste bin. I don’t remember what that training session was about but I’ll never forget that conference organiser trying to explain to 20 hungry researchers that digestives were actually nutritious and 4 of them had the same calorie content as a sandwich. It was a miracle no one died that day.
One conference I know advertised that they would be offering ‘breakfast’ to any attendees that arrived early. Those who did then attend early were greeted with a fresh bacon roll (with non-pork vegan options) and free coffee. Speaking to those that attended they considered it one of the best conferences they’d ever been to (and now 8 years later still speak about it in almost mystical tones).
If you want to start simple and avoid potential over-promising problems you can always do something like take a packet of Fox’s Party Rings to your next meeting. Fox’s Party Rings are super cheap, tasty, vegan and nut-allergy-friendly. They are about as close to a universal biscuit as it is possible to get. This post is not sponsored by Fox’s Party Rings but I am hoping that if I mentioned them enough that Fox’s Party Rings would consider reaching out and giving me some free Fox’s Party Rings…. *ahem*
Alternatively, if you run an office why not set out a bowl of fruit each week? In one business park, I know there was a company that had “gone all Google” and offered free fruit and even had a water cooler. It was widely understood around the park that that company was literally the coolest place to work ever… because of a bowl of fruit.
Even if you don’t run events or an office you can start small at your own desk or office. Keep a secret stash of chocolates or individually wrapped biscuits to offer people who come to see you. Nothing takes the sting out of telling someone all their data is garbage more than following up with “hobnob?”
As you make your holiday preparations, consider getting out or tuning in to see your local Thanksgiving Parade. This year El Paso celebrates its 87th annual Sun Bowl Parade and Houston celebrates its 74th annual H-E-B Thanksgiving Day Parade. Beyond these long-standing events, there are other parades happening across the state as well. Learn more below.
Houston’s 2023 H-E-B Thanksgiving Day Parade route map
Located in the heart of downtown Houston, this event is one of the oldest Thanksgiving Day parades in the country. Each year, several hundred thousand Houstonians line the streets to cheer on participants. The parade will traverse over 20 city blocks and will feature elaborate floats, colorful marching bands, high-flying balloons, and other uniquely Houston entries.
The El Paso Downtown Lions Club organized the Parade in 1935. The parade was held on New Year’s Day from 1936 until 1978 when the event was rescheduled for Thanksgiving Day. The holiday pageant is planned, coordinated and produced by volunteer efforts and draws an annual crowd of over 250,000 spectators. The Sun Bowl Parade is the largest community event in the West Texas, New Mexico and Mexico area and brings together service clubs and civic organizations as well as all sectors of business and industries within the community.
This year’s parade theme is “Rock ‘n’ Roll Extravaganza” and the Grand Marshal will be Tuff Hederman, a four-time World Champion and Pro Rodeo Hall-of-Fame bull rider. Tickets can be purchased at Vista Markets across the city and the parade will be viewable on local NBC affiliate station KTSM Channel 9. Additionally, a video of the parade will be available the following day at www.sunbowl.org and on YouTube.
The 42nd Annual Ford Holiday River Parade is a San Antonio tradition that offers a spectacular one-hour parade along the San Antonio River Walk. This year’s theme, Holiday Stories will kick off the San Antonio tradition of ringing in the holiday season.
Always held the day after Thanksgiving, the parade and river lighting ceremony will feature 28 illuminated floats and over 100,000 lights (2,250 strands) illuminating the River Walk. The lights turn on from sundown to sunrise every day until the weekend following New Year’s Day.
This ticketed parade begins Friday, November 24, 2023 at 6PM. at the Tobin Center and arrives later in other areas (check this map for the route). Several free viewing areas are offered on the parade route (bring your own chair). This space is available on a first-come, first-served basis: East side of the River Walk between Pecan Street and Richmond Ave. It is broadcast live at 7 p.m. at the Arneson River Theatre.
On December 3, 1988, the first Dallas Holiday Parade was produced by employees from The Adolphus and Children’s Medical Center Dallas and enjoyed by a crowd of 70,000 enthusiastic children and their family members. The Dallas Holiday Parade is the city’s largest one-day, outdoor event. More than 350 television stations in 159 markets have syndicated the parade. It has become a holiday tradition for thousands of families throughout North Texas and coast to coast.
Brownsville’s Annual Christmas Parade is thrown by the organizers of Charro Days, which an annual event celebrating Mexican heritage along the South Texas-Mexico border in late February. For the Christmas Parade, you can expect floats, marching bands, cheer squads, and more.
It’s not a South Texas holiday without a posada, and this year you can enjoy it on the Island for two nights in a row. La Posada will not only feature the iconic boat parade, but the U.S. Marines will also be helping Santa’s elves by collecting new, unwrapped toys for tots. Enjoy delicious food by the water, entertainment galore, and incredible Gulf Coast Capital holiday vibes as the night is lit up with boats coasting down the Intracoastal Waterway.
After a report from Media Matters showed advertisements from major brands appeared next to antisemitic posts on X, the company sued the media watchdog group and its reporter. The Texas Attorney General’s Office plans to investigate the nonprofit for potential fraud.
TORONTO — Jane Pryce’s near hook-up with attractive American tourist Zach Greer was narrowly averted when he unselfconsciously referred to his toque as a “beanie.” The twenty-seven year-old found herself being chatted up by Greer at a bar on Yonge St (“yawnj,” as he pronounced it). They spoke for hours, largely about the quirky differences […]
WASHINGTON—Describing himself as a failure in conversations with family, friends, and White House staffers, President Biden reportedly spent his birthday Monday depressed over not having accomplishing anything by the age of 81. “Ugh, another year come and gone with nothing to show for it,” said a despondent Biden,…
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. Should I have told anyone I thought my incompetent coworker made up her work history?
My organization hired “Jane,” a coordinator for my department, about six months ago. I didn’t interview her or knew anything about her before she was hired. I am one level below her manager, who is in my department but on a separate team. I interacted with her mostly by helping her with a few tricky process things that are hard to understand if you’re just starting.
While working with Jane, I noticed that she seemed pretty unprofessional for a person with her work experience, and she seemed to have kind of weird email etiquette. For example, she basically just declined to do a training because she didn’t want to, and instead kept asking me to do her requests even after I said, “I’m sorry, I don’t have the capacity to help you with this, you need to do the training so you can do it yourself.” She told a very long, overly personal story about her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend at a company happy hour. We have a pretty informal email culture at my workplace, but her emails were super casual, along the lines of “heyyyy girl” to higher-ups. When she was in charge of organizing a team retreat, she forgot to order lunch (so other team members ran out to pick up food for everyone) and was 30 minutes late to the first session (about 90 minutes after she was supposed to be there to set up breakfast) because she didn’t plan for traffic.
All of this added up to some red flags for a person about 40 years old who claimed on her resume that she had worked as an executive assistant at several large, well-known companies and had managed large admin projects. Because I am nosy and probably unwise, I did a Google deep dive and couldn’t find any evidence that Jane had worked at the companies she claimed. She does not have a LinkedIn profile. I couldn’t find anything at all to support her professional history, although I did find tons of other internet trails (social media profiles, etc.). But, of course, I had no real evidence that she had lied on her resume, I don’t want to be a person who goes around assuming someone is lying, and in any case, I wasn’t her manager or even directly on her team so it was probably weird for me to be spending time on this in the first place! I also think that, while making up a work history on your resume is obviously a big deal, it’s a more immediate problem that she was not doing the basic duties of her job. And that part was visible to her manager (including the training stuff, which I had filled in her manager about) so I figured there was no reason for me to get involved.
Cut to this week. I got an email saying, “Jane is no longer with us as of today.” My organizational culture is really forgiving, so I assume she must have done something pretty serious to be let go with no notice and so quickly that her email was still active (in my six years at this large organization, the only other instance I know of someone being fired without notice involved embezzlement). I don’t know what happened. Should I have brought my concerns about her resume to her manager or my manager before things got to this point? Since Jane’s manager definitely knew about her performance concerns, was there any reason for me to bring up my nosy internet sleuthing?
Nah, I don’t think so. The performance issues were your business since you were training her, and hopefully you didn’t sugarcoat those when you brought them to her manager. But it’s up to them to do their due diligence before hiring someone — and, as you point out, the immediate problem was that she wasn’t able to do her job.
It would have been different if you had clear, incontrovertible evidence that she had made up her work history, but you didn’t have that. And really, lots of people don’t have LinkedIn or don’t talk about their jobs online. So maybe she did lie about her experience or maybe she didn’t — but either way she couldn’t do the job, and that was the thing to focus on.
2. My coworker uses everyone else’s trash cans
I have a coworker who tends to throw away their garbage in other people’s bins. Everyone has their own trash bin at their desks, including this person. But they still make the rounds to “chat” while also taking the opportunity to throw away anything in their pockets or in their hands. Yes, including stinky lunch leftovers. I don’t want to sit next to someone else’s smelly food for the rest of my day. How can I tell this person to stop without sounding like excessively controlling?
For food: “Would you mind not putting that in my bin? Whenever there’s food in it, I smell it all day.”
For other stuff: I don’t think you can reasonably stop him from throwing, like, scrap paper in your bin since it’s a trash can and that’s what it’s there for. If he’s filling it up, that’s a different story — in that case you could say, “Could you take that to your bin so I don’t have to empty this” — but otherwise let that part of it go.
3. My office told me to pump in the bathroom
I recently had a baby and am currently work from home until the new year. My child is exclusively breastfed, and I pump and store milk regularly.
I went into the office today to pick up some items, and I quickly came the realization that my breasts become full and painful rather quickly if I’m not pumping or around my child. This prompted me to ask HR what accommodations would be made when I come back in January. I jokingly typed “(not in the bathroom please)” when asking where I could pump.
To my surprise, he said I would actually have to pump in the bathroom until other accommodations are made. I am not doing that (for a multitude of reasons), and I’m not sure how to respond.
Nope, that’s illegal. The PUMP for Nursing Mothers Act, signed into law in late 2022, requires employers to provide nursing employees with a private place to pump, and the law explicitly says it cannot be a bathroom.
Send HR a message saying something like this: “I wanted to make sure you know that federal law does require us to provide nursing employees with a private place to pump, which cannot be a bathroom. (Details here — the law just passed last year so the company might not have been aware of it.) Can we arrange for me to reserve times in a private office space or locking conference room once I’m back in January?”
4. Using a pet photo as my Slack profile photo
Most people in our internal Slack have icons of themselves or no icons. My boss and I both have pictures of our pets. We work not directly with animals, but in an animal-focused area of a much larger business. The great majority of our communication is internal within this animal-focused subsection. Is this a bad idea? It really is a job focused on animals and everyone’s pets are an incredibly common point of friendly conversation in the office and online. Mostly I think its funny, but I’m newer to this kind of job and my boss is known to be a character (he’s great!).
I think you’re fine. You work in an animal-focused area and your boss has a pet photo as his image. Even if those things weren’t true, it still wouldn’t necessarily be a problem — but because those things are both true, you definitely don’t need to worry.
5. Explaining why I’m quitting with nothing else lined up
I have been using your tips to land a different role but have come to the conclusion that I am just too burned out at this point to put in the hours needed to successfully pivot to a new-to-me, competitive role. Thus, I am gathering my wits to resign from my current role without another lined up. What is a fast, truthful, information-lite way of conveying this to my current job (they will ask due to concerns about competitors) and to interviewers? “Taking time to explore my options” seems trite.
To your current employer: “I want to take some time off for some personal projects and to think about what I want to do next.”
To interviewers: “I was in a position to be able to take some time off in between jobs so I can be really thoughtful about what to do next.”
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
A reader writes:
I own a business and have noticed recently that my receptionist, Lisa, has been going to the bathroom at really inconvenient — and suspicious — times. We have people coming in by appointment, and especially in the last several weeks, she has gotten up to go to the bathroom right before a difficult customer is scheduled to come in, or right before she’d have to have a difficult conversation (for instance, collecting no-show appointment fees), or when someone has to make another appointment but the person they need to make an appointment with is pretty solidly booked — sometimes even when the phone rings and the caller ID shows someone that I have reason to think she doesn’t want to deal with. She makes sure to announce that she cannot wait any longer to use the bathroom. This leaves my back-end person to pick up the slack, which is interfering with his job duties.
Lisa already works shortened hours so she can be home when her kids get home from school, so my back-end person and I are already picking up some extra work and trying to fit in our jobs in fewer hours (which we both knew when I hired her), and this is putting more strain on us.
Everything on your site says you can’t police someone’s bathroom habits, which I totally agree with. Lisa isn’t going to the bathroom an excessive number of times, or for long periods of time, just at really inconvenient times that feels like she’s skipping out on the hard parts of the job.
I’ve had the conversation a few times about looking at the schedule before doing things like going to lunch, or getting a snack, or grabbing more envelopes from the storage room, or whatever. Is this a “name the pattern conversation”? How do I bring this up without sounding like I’m policing her bathroom habits? And if she says that she can’t change this pattern, do I just have to drop it and put these things on the back-end employee and myself? I don’t want to be “that boss,” but come on!
Yeah, that sounds like a pattern. It’s not about policing her bathroom habits; it’s that she appears to be deliberately avoiding the less desirable parts of her job.
Of course — and this is important — that assumes the tasks Lisa wants to avoid are occasional enough that the pattern of avoidance is obvious. If, though, her job has her dealing with difficult customers all day long, of course she would end up being away from the desk for some of them, because she has normal human bathroom needs. But for the rest of this answer, I’m going to assume that’s not the case.
One way you might be able to address it is by talking to Lisa each morning and naming anything you want her to be sure to be available for that day — like, “Can you make sure you’re available at your desk at two specific times today: first when Tangerina Stewpot comes in at 11 since she often has questions, as well as at 12:15 when Apollo Mongoose checks out so you can flag the late fees he has accumulated?”
But that sounds like that will only get at parts of the problem; it won’t address the ducking out when she sees a particular person on the Caller ID, for example.
So it’s okay to address the pattern itself. You could say something like: “I’ve noticed you’re taking your breaks right as a difficult task is coming up — like right as a difficult customer calls or is scheduled to come in, or when you’d need to have a difficult conversation like X or Y. Of course you can’t be glued to your desk all day, but it’s happening frequently enough that the pattern concerns me. So I wanted to talk about what would solve it. One option is that we could look at the day’s schedule each morning and make sure we’re aligned on which appointments you should make sure to be available at the desk for. I also wondered if you’d like more help with how to handle some of those difficult conversations so they start to feel easier, or if there’s something else going on that’s making you uneasy about those tasks.”
The idea with this conversation isn’t necessarily to come up with a foolproof plan that will solve 100% of the problem, but being candid about what you’re seeing might go a long way toward changing things. And if there is context that better explains what Lisa is doing (like if she does need more training, or if Apollo Mongoose treated her horribly last time he was in, or there’s a medical thing in play), this creates an opportunity for her to raise it.
You asked what to do if she says she can’t change the pattern. There’s a good chance that this conversation will change things, but if she says she can’t, try implementing some of those solutions yourself: give her more training on tough customer interactions (including role-playing some of them and also letting her observe you handling them) and start doing that daily schedule-aligning. If there’s still no change and the avoidance pattern is unmistakeable, then you’d need to look at whether she’s well suited for the job, especially in combination with her already shortened hours — but hopefully this can steer things away from that point.
WASHINGTON—Deciding it was time for her to become more politically active, Vice President Kamala Harris recently logged onto ActBlue to donate $7 to the Biden reelection campaign, sources reported Monday. “This is just my way of doing something to help out,” said Harris, who briefly considered rounding her donation up…
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