advice about your coworkers

A reader writes:

In a few weeks, I’ll be taking 2 weeks off work to have plastic surgery. After returning to work, I’ll be on a few work restrictions for 2-3 weeks. My immediate supervisor and manager know the reason, but I really don’t want to tell my co-workers that the reason I can’t shift books or push carts (I work in a library) is because of a boob job.

I’m not necessarily embarassed, but I really don’t want to have the discussion with my co-workers. We are all cordial and chat sometimes, but talking about my boob job with them isn’t my idea of a good time.

The thing is, they’re really nosy, and I don’t know what to say other than “It’s private,” but they won’t let me off the hook with that. Any advice?

“It’s private” is exactly the sort of response that you should be able to use but in reality will just encourage speculation, especially among nosy people.

Instead, I’d go with “I had a medical procedure, but I’m fine,” and if anyone asks follow-up questions, then say, “I don’t want to get into medical details, but everything is okay.”

Keep in mind that even a lot of non-nosy people might ask, “Are you okay?” — not intending to be nosy, but out of genuine concern. So you want to have your follow-up response ready, and ideally one that politely conveys “I don’t want to discuss this at work.”  I like “I don’t want to get into medical details” because you can say it in a tone that’s friendly and polite, and even one that implies “it’s for your own good; I don’t want to gross you out with the details of a situation that for all you know could be gory or highly personal.”

{ 88 comments }

Are you annoying all your coworkers? Find out here.

{ 7 comments }

A reader writes:

I recently discovered that a former direct report took credit for my title/job during the brief 9-month period she reported to me temporarily while my assistant was on maternity leave. What’s mystifying is that she did it on LinkedIn. While we’re not connected, we share a good number of connections because we have the same colleagues!

By doing so, it appears she was able to secure a senior position, thereby skipping having to serve in a non-senior role at all.

Understandably, I’m livid at someone taking credit for my job — especially since she was completely incompetent and showed no dedication or effort to perform well while reporting to me and spent 99% of her time looking for a job.

Should I contact the new employer and inform them of her lie? Most advice I’ve seen says to stay out of it — but, since she reported to me, I’m fully aware of her propensity for unethical behavior (“little white lies” being the norm) and if I can do something to put a stop to it, I’d be happier for it.

Of course, I understand that even if I report this factual misrepresentation, the new employer could opt to do nothing, but for some reason I think I have to do it! Help — what should I do?

There’s a strong argument for doing nothing. This presumably doesn’t impact you, and besides, if she’s as incompetent as you think she is, she’s probably not going to last very long in her new position anyway.

I suppose you could make an argument that the new employer deserves to know … but this employer apparently didn’t bother to check references or even verify her employment history, so that’s a problem of their own making.

I’m fully aware of the powerful pull of wanting to mete out justice or at least set people straight — I struggle with it all the time, believe me. But I don’t think your role is to be the justice-dispenser here, and you’re probably going to be happier if you just push her out of your mind. She doesn’t work for you anymore, and this is only going to bother you if you decide it’s going to bother you.

But if you feel you must do something, one option short of contacting her new employer is to contact her and point out the “error.” You’re probably going to come across as a busybody if you do this, but you could say something like: “I noticed that you used the title Taco Manager on your LinkedIn profile. Since I’m actually our only Taco Manager and you were the Taco Assistant, would you correct it to ward off any confusion? You’ll probably want to do that anyway so that it doesn’t cause problems for you with employment verifications and so forth.”  (See, it still sounds like a busybody.)

What do others think? Anyone want to argue for contacting the employer?

P.S. If this situation sounds familiar, we had a letter about a similar issue a year ago, only in that situation the perpetrator was still working with the person.

P.P.S. What’s up with letting someone you describe as “totally incompetent” work for you for nine months? That might be the bigger issue to focus on.

{ 118 comments }

A reader writes:

I’m hoping that you can help out the office with a small problem from one of our fellow coworkers. We’re a bubbly little office of 8 women and one gentleman – as you can imagine we chit chat throughout the week, take lunches and attend meetings together, etc. When I first began in the office, I would catch one coworker looking at me. It’s an intense look – the kind you can feel when not looking and even if you look over as she’s looking, she doesn’t smile and go about her business – she lingers. Honestly, once you get past the judgmental aspect, it’s downright creepy.

I thought I was alone in this until a few weeks ago I was quietly asked by another coworker if I noticed it too. Turns out she stares at everyone – throughout the day (i.e., at large meetings, lunches) and it’s making us all really uncomfortable. Do you have any advice for dealing with this? It seems like it might be a tough thing to mention / is it really worth the potential of making her feeling really embarrassed?

I know this type!  Obviously, this isn’t a huge problem, but it is indeed unnerving.

One option is to just ignore it — just decide that this is her own weird eccentricity and you’re going to leave her to happily stare at people while you deliberately become oblivious.

But if you do want to try to curtail it, I think this is one of those things that you address in the moment when it’s happening, so that you can be casual about it rather than making it into a Big Deal Conversation.

Now, I realize that not everyone subscribes to this theory, but I tend to believe that you can just be direct about almost anything as long as your tone is nice. So if you want to say something to her about this … well, just say it.

When you feel her staring, just meet her eyes with an expectant look on your face. Ask, “Do you need something from me?”  If she says no, you can say, “Oh, I thought you were looking at me” or even the completely direct “How come you’re staring at me?”  (Again, said nicely — like you’re curious, not like you’re being confrontational.)

Or, alternately, just say “Jane, stop staring at me! It unnerves me!”

If these are too direct for your comfort level, then you’re left going back to option one:  Commit to blocking it out, which is often a good approach for annoying traits in other people that you can’t change.

{ 75 comments }

A reader writes:

My fiance was offered a job in the organization where I’ve been working for just over a year. Before he and I ever started dating, he used to work for the woman who is now our Chief of Staff (COS). The COS is doing the hiring and would be his direct manager. I am in a different chain of command, but ultimately we all report to the same head of the organization. Everyone involved knows that we’re getting married in October. It’s possible that the fact that I’m a few offices away from COS brought my fiance to her mind when this position opened (she specifically contacted him and asked him to apply), but she is hiring him based on her previous knowledge of his work (and how he did in the interview process).

My question is this: I talked to the COS about whether there’s anything we need to think about or prepare for regarding our relationship in the workplace. I’m fairly hesitant about this, but she was frankly kind of dismissive of my concerns. I’m planning on scheduling a meeting with HR and my fiance after he comes on board, but do you think I should talk to them right now?

This is a great opportunity for him and we both really want him to take it, but I also want to do everything I can to make it be as drama-free as possible. Any tips?

Don’t schedule a meeting with HR or with anyone else about this. It’s between the two of you. You need to decide together how you’re going to handle the fact that you’re working with each other, but it’s not really other people’s problem, and you’re making it into a bigger deal than it needs to be. I mean, it’s of course a big deal to you two, and it’ll become a big deal to other people if you don’t handle it well, but asking for these meetings ahead of time is too much.

What you should do is sit down with your fiance and figure out how you’re going to (a) keep the relationship from being an issue for other people, and (b) keep work from being an issue in your relationship.

Keeping the relationship from being an issue for other people:

* Don’t gross people out. No pet names, no PDA, no adoring looks, no acting like a couple in the office. Your goal is that you act so professionally that people forget you’re a couple.

* No fighting each other’s battles. If one of you is having an issue with a coworker or a boss, the other one stays out of it. Even if you would normally get involved if you weren’t a couple, you stay out of it anyway, because everyone will assume you’re acting out of bias and your credibility will suffer. Be clear with each other ahead of time that this is how you’re going to operate, so that you’re prepared when it happens. And it will happen.

* If you’re not getting along, keep it out of the workplace. Inflicting tension (or arguing or outright nastiness) on your coworkers is unfair to them. Do you tend to fight? If so, have a game plan ahead of time for how you’ll deal with working together when you want to kill each other.

* Neither of you can supervise the other’s work, now or in the future. If one of you is offered a promotion that would have you managing the other person (directly or indirectly), you either turn it down or the other person finds a new job. It sucks, but that’s the price you pay for working with your fiance.

Keeping work from being an issue in your relationship:

* Make your home a work-discussion-free zone to whatever extent possible. If you spend all your time at home talking about work, bad things will happen. Not instantly (in fact, at first it will be fun), but eventually.

* Know ahead of time what you’re going to do if one of you is having a hard time at work — struggling in the job, not getting along with a boss, being warned that you’re in danger of being fired, etc. It is very hard for a partner not to be affected by that when they are working in the same workplace, and it can end up ruining the not-struggling partner’s ability to stay there too. It’s easy to think, “Oh, we’re both awesome at what we do, so that’s not going to happen,” but it happens. Figure out ahead of time how you’re going to handle it professionally.

In addition to the points above, make sure you’ve got your eyes open about some hard realities of working with your significant other:  You may hear unflattering comments about each other, and that will be uncomfortable. People’s opinion of one of you will impact their opinion of the other. If the organization has lay-offs, you might both lose your jobs at once. And more. Go into this knowing exactly what you’re signing up for.

And again, this is stuff for the two of you to figure out. No meetings with other people, just you two at your dining room table, talking it through. Good luck!

{ 18 comments }

Since we recently had a letter about stalking issues at work, I thought this one, describing a different side of the situation, was timely. A reader writes:

I am one of two receptionists at a small company. About a month ago, I received a call from a woman, asking for one of my coworkers. When I asked for her name, she said that she was this gentleman’s wife. Come to find out, my coworker is not married and refers to this woman as his “stalker.” He did not seem overly concerned that he was getting calls from her but would not take them and instructed me to always send them to his voicemail. She called back several times in the following days but the calls tapered off and I had not heard from her for a few weeks. The other receptionist has not received calls from her either. However, yesterday this woman called twice. The first call was early in the day and I was able to give a truthful answer when I said he was not in the office. She called back later saying that she had not heard back from him and that it was “unlike him” to not respond. I told her he hadn’t come into work that day.

My dilemma is that the situation makes me uncomfortable and I want to do something about it, but I’m not sure it’s any of my business. I don’t like lying to people on the phone (i.e., saying “he’s in a meeting” when he’s really not) and although telling her that this gentleman is unavailable is generally truthful, she often presses for more information. A small part of me wants to tell her to stop calling because he does not want to speak to her, but I hesitate because I’m not sure it’s my place to do so. In any event, I want to be prepared in case she continues to call. My coworker has told me to send the calls to his voicemail, but I don’t really want to deal with this woman or be the mediator in a situation that is generally uncomfortable. My question is this – should I bring the matter up with someone (HR or the coworker) or should I ignore it until it becomes a continual problem?

Don’t tell her that he doesn’t want to speak to her without clearing that with him first. As we talked about a lot in the last office stalker-related post, there are very specific ways that people are recommended to handle stalkers, not all of which are intuitive. For instance, in some situations experts recommend specifically not delivering a message like that to the stalker, but simply continuing to have their calls go into voicemail, so that things don’t escalate. I have no idea if that’s what your coworker is doing or not, but it’s a very good reason for you not to take things into your own hands.

You should simply continue transfering these calls to your coworker’s voicemail, as he’s requested. You don’t need to lie and say he’s out if you don’t want to, but then you should simply say, “One moment, I’ll transfer you” — and then transfer her to his voicemail. No lying, still following his request, done.

You should also probably tell your coworker that you’re worried about the frequency of the calls and ask if it would be helpful to bring HR into the loop to develop a plan for handling this … after all, if there’s an unstable woman harassing him at work, it has the potential to affect the rest of you. (Will she show up there one day, etc.?)  But it’s really important to handle this in a way that’s sympathetic to the situation he’s in, doesn’t make him feel like he’s the problem, and doesn’t discourage him from being open about any help that he may need from you and other coworkers, safety-wise, because if he’s in a dangerous situation, driving him to hide it is a really bad idea.

I will also note that some readers will probably wonder if this isn’t really a stalker situation, but instead is actually a spouse trying to track him down for child support, etc. And that’s perfectly possible (just as it would be if the genders were reversed). But until you know otherwise, take him at his word — because it can be extremely damaging for someone who is trying to escape an abusive or harassing situation to be suspected of being the cause of it (particularly for men, who already have a higher barrier to being taken seriously on these issues).

{ 64 comments }

A reader writes:

I inadvertently found out while doing a search of local registered sex offenders in my area that a very friendly and polite older gentlemen who recently began to work at my company is a registered sex offender for possession of child pornography. He admitted his guilt, is on probation, and lost his former job working for the court system, according to a newspaper article I dug up. He’s now using his middle name instead of his first name, but without a doubt is my co-worker. I can’t believe that my company would hire such a person. Our department of 85 are, for the most part, a very family-centered group of proud parents and grandparents that would have this gentlemen’s head if they ever found out.

With all of this said… I honestly don’t think my company knows this information. I work for a very large company that has multiple offices in nearly every state that outsources all preemployment paperwork and background checks to an outside firm on the other side of the U.S. I was hired about three months ago and know for a fact that none of my references or former companies were contacted. (All that was done was a credit check and The Work Number reports.) Is this any of my business or should I just let it go? I believe it’s definitely something that management should know, but I would also never want to begrudge someone the chance to make a living. Do I inform management or keep this information to myself?

I’ve been sitting on this question because I can’t come up with an answer I’m fully comfortable with. Ultimately, I don’t think you should say anything, but I can understand why you’re struggling with this.

On one hand, I firmly believe that refusing to hire people with criminal convictions in their past is a good way to ensure that those people never get assimilated back into society, increasing the chances that they’ll offend again. On the other hand, some crimes say something about someone’s character and judgment, and that doesn’t necessarily change after they’ve served their time. And pedophilia is notorious for being something that doesn’t simply go away after you punish someone for it.  On a third hand, this man’s current job is presumably not one that brings him into contact with children. On a fourth hand, I can totally understand why you and your coworkers would be uncomfortable anyway, especially if there are company picnics that people bring their families to, or if people sometimes bring their kids by the office, and so forth.

If your company does criminal background checks, they presumably know about this man’s past and hired him anyway. It’s possible that they discussed it with him and that conversation was convincing to them that he was safe to hire. It’s also possible that the background check doesn’t include criminal records and so your company’s management doesn’t know anything about it. And it’s also possible that the circumstances of this man’s crime were less than the charge would imply (after all, there are people on the sex offender registry because of sexting they did when they were teenagers; while this guy’s age would seem to preclude that particular explanation, it’s possible there’s another one that would lessen the situation in your mind).

It’s also possible that you live in one of the small number of states that prohibit employers from not hiring someone because of a criminal record unless there’s a direct correlation between the crime and the job.

There are a ton of factors here, but ultimately, unless you have reason to think that someone is in danger, I don’t think it’s your place to say anything. The guy has been dealt with by the criminal justice system and is now trying to resume his life. Until/unless you have reason to think he presents a danger, I wouldn’t interfere. But ugh. This is a tough situation for everyone (including him, I’d imagine), and one where you want everyone involved to keep a cool head.

{ 313 comments }