A reader writes:
I own a business and recently I’ve had an issue with one of my employees. She will go all day without eating (because of what looks like poor planning) and then get very irritable with everyone and complains about being hungry. I’ll offer to order her something or offer her the granola bars we have in the break room, but she brushes me off. I think she thinks I’m being an annoying mom type but really I just don’t want to deal with her hangry attitude because it affects the entire office when she gets like that. Any tips?
I answer this question — and three others — over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here.
Other questions I’m answering there today include:
- Asking back an employee but not his spouse
- Internships and equity
- Writing notes on your hand at work
This question could have been written about my partner! I would note for LW1 that a lot of medications (particularly for ADHD) suppress appetite, causing folks to go hours without eating because they truly don’t have an appetite only to suddenly realize they’re starved/hangry/etc late into the afternoon.
No that this doesn’t solve the problem, and of course this employee needs to manage her own moods, but I share in case it provides a new way of looking at the problem!
Similar and opposite: struggling without ADHD medication now because reasons, and sometimes I hyperfocus so hard that I lose track of time and don’t notice I’m hungry. Then I get hangry and don’t even realize it. I’ve had to apologize to people for getting snippy with them.
I have no hunger signals. I go from fine to mad and there is nothing in between that tells me hunger is there. I just schedule eating times now.
Another person with no hunger signals. I just have to stay on my schedule by eating things at eating times. I also don’t get hangry when my blood sugar is low, so there’s not much of a mood signal either. When I started on ADHD medication I had to lean even harder on the eating things at eating times strategy. Luckily, it works :)
Same. Other people don’t deserve the attitude that comes from me not eating. That’s for me to manage.
Agree! This is why I stash protein bars in my purse, my car, and my desk at work, just in case. I don’t want to have to squash down hangry feelings while also trying to work and be pleasant to my colleagues.
Me too. It’s especially bad when I want to lose weight, because that necessarily means being somewhat hangry.
Yeah, if I haven’t been hungry before 3pm at work, that’s snacks and meds time.
I had a coworker who lost her hunger and fullness cues in a head injury (brains are weird) and she dealt with it by having both a very strict eating schedule and always packing a lunch with the right amount of food (because if there was extra she could accidentally eat herself sick without noticing).
She also clearly communicated this to the rest of us so we knew “noon, Christina must eat” and scheduled her lab work around it.
I had another coworker who would ignore being hungry until her blood sugar crashed hard and she couldn’t do simple math. With her I would check the clock if all the sudden her math didn’t make sense or she was super grumpy and say “Betty, food?” and she’d go “oh, not again!” and go eat something. Was it annoying to have to be her external cue giver? Yes, but less annoying than trying to fix mistakes.
But the important thing was that both of these people were 1) aware of the issue and 2) willing to fix it immediately when it was mentioned/noted.
Yep, same. I’m not medicated for my ADHD but I do often hyperfocus and miss hunger signals. Luckily (?) I grew up with a diabetic mother and us kids all had non diabetic hypoglycemia issues as children so it was just normalized when I was growing up to always keep snacks on hand for low blood sugar moments. As an adult I do just keep a bag of jerky and individual servings of candies, granola bars, and crackers on me and will snack on them every couple hours. My portable calorie stash has also helped many a friend and even a stranger or two.
This is me. It’s not even that I don’t realize I’m hungry, I get sick if I eat too much while my meds are in full swing. I try to keep snacks on hand for when they wear off but there are definitely a lot of reasons (medical or otherwise) people might have altered eating schedules.
Ozempic and the like can do this too. In terms of how this changes the advice, LW just needs to be mindful that there may be a medical condition/ADA at play. Of course, being rude to colleagues is not a reasonable accommodation, but she should approach it a little carefully.
I’m on Mounjaro and my ability to assess my hungriness is pretty much gone. I eat because I set reminders for myself to do so. She may need to start using her Outlook notifications or phone reminders to tell her to take a moment to go grab lunch– but that’s on her, not her supervisor.
I’m curious if she feels she even has enough time to go get lunch if she doesn’t bring it with her, I would not be surprised if her crankiness is also a result of blaming her workload for her inability to disconnect and take care of her physiological needs. Of course she’s an adult and needs to plan better, but also there are probably more things at play here than just her forgetfulness.
Removed – please don’t give medical advice here. – Alison
Is that how Ozempic makes you lose weight? By taking away your appetite?
It works for fat people like me who can’t recognize when they’re eaten enough without being so full they feel sick.
^ this. It doesn’t make you stop eating, it resets your body’s signals to tell you you’ve eaten enough.
My partner, unmedicated, literally cannot feel the sensation of fullness. He will eat, and eat, and eat, and eat, utterly mindlessly, for hours, because he never gets that feeling telling him “oh I’m full”. (Never gets sick from it either – that’s another bodily sensation that Does Not Work.) Now he’s on Mounjaro, he can finally go “you know what, I feel full, I’ve eaten enough, let’s stop here” – he had to actually sit down and have a bit of a happy cry after starting Mounjaro and having his first meal while on it, because he didn’t know what feeling full was like until then – and if he does try to push past that he will start feeling very ill, another thing he’d never encountered before. So no, it doesn’t take away his appetite; it regulates it, which is what he desperately needed.
I’m sure some people probably do end up having no appetite while on Ozempic, Mounjaro, Wegovy, etc, but that’s not how the drugs are meant to work. They’re a helping hand, not a bludgeon.
It works in a LOT of different ways! It’s actually really interesting.
The most basic is that it suppresses your appetite to different degrees, mostly by slowing digestion and also releasing hormones that signal fullness to your brain. It also, however, helps with ‘food noise’ and dulls that impulse to make you snack more or finish something in the fridge just because it’s there.
Now THAT has been (anecdotally and, I believe, is being scientifically tested now) applied to other impulse behaviors like gambling addiction and, I’ve seen posited, alcoholism. So I think that’s a fascinating look at how that sort of addiction works and how it can be suppressed. If it turns out to be something that is widely replicated it could have a massive on people’s general health.
(Note: it is not a miracle drug. It is amazing, but there have been significant side-effects associated with it that can have long-term health consequences for people. In the UK, at least, that has led to more restrictions being put into place to make it more regulated.)
Yeah, I took a while to adjust to that when I started, because normally you could set your clock by my appetite and I just had no context for “you should eat now even though you’re not hungry and all food seems gross”.
If anyone else is struggling with it, I find that having some trail mix or something to graze on really helps. Nuts and raisins or similar is usually something that I find not actively horrible and snacking means that I can get something resembling a meal’s worth of food even if all normal lunch options are nonspecifically Wrong today.
I have to eat frequently so my appetite doesn’t overwhelm my self-control.
….yes, and? It’s the employee’s responsibility to manage her own food and her attitude.
This is why my kid has reminders in their phone.
The alarm goes off, it’s time to eat something.
the alarm goes off, it’s time to drink, take meds, etc.
It takes a bit of time to set the alarms, and then they go off every day.
also I get disorganized and forget to bring my lunch or underestimate how hungry Ill be
This. My kid on ADHD meds can go all day long with 0 food, and we struggle to put anything at all in her lunch that’s able to go down so she can function. She has lost weight she didn’t have to spare. I wish people had a better understanding of why people act the way they do, and engage in conversations that seek to help instead of shame and blame.
I think that’s different though – she’s a kid! It’s completely understandable that she may struggle with reading her body’s cues or managing her needs throughout the day.
Some people only get diagnosed as adults, and the meds and their effects are new. As an employee, they are of course responsible for their behaviour. But like anyone, they deserve compassion and curiosity before judgement. I see how this affects my child, who can suddenly concentrate and function but cannot eat. It’s a learning curve, and she like anyone–child or adult–needs support.
People with different neurotypes don’t magically gain interoception just because they get older. Difference in interoception are part and parcel of neurodiversity.
It is not appropriate for a manager or coworker to attempt to solve that problem. It’s just not. LW has done more than enough by offering to order food and suggesting granola bars.
This is comparing apples and oranges (I swear that pun was not intentional).
This person is not your child, they are an adult who OP quite literally has tried offering food to before and that hasn’t gone well. It’s not shaming and blaming to say that this can’t continue; it can’t continue.
I have several people in my life who get hangry and it can be extremely challenging to be on the receiving end of someone’s mood swings, no matter the cause. If it’s a medical problem, employee still needs to find a solution. I try to carry around snacks for my partner, but even then I don’t take responsibility if I don’t have any – they are an adult who needs to anticipate their own needs. And if those needs are not anticipated, they need to mitigate the negative impact on others, barring a medical emergency.
Yeah, other people dealing with their hangriness doesn’t seem like a reasonable accommidation.
Right – I get hangry. It’s actually physiological* and once the switch gets flipped your body takes over. SO that means I have to make sure that switch doesn’t get flipped. I haven’t been hangry in decades. Sometimes it means putting my foot down, and making sure a group of us stops to eat. It was also stressful advocating to get the first appointment of the day for a procedure because I would lose my mind if I had to be fasting for many many hours after I got up.
It’s up to me to manage this.
*the general theory of hangry is that for a group of people, when their bloods sugar gets low, their body compensates by sending a huge jolt of adrenaline and cortisol. So that’s suddenly ‘taking over’ your body. It’s coursing around causing havoc!
Had a coworker once who was into intermittent fasting and they were like that and it was awful. If you dared mention that they were very different (and not in a good way) when they were fasting, you’d get a huffy lecture on the “benefits” of intermittent fasting.
Removed a debate on intermittent fasting here; this isn’t the place for it.
I think this is why the focus has to be on the attitude, rather than the food. No one cares about the food really, some people operate on fumes and are fine. If you make it the focus of your concern, you risk being mistakenly seen doubter of diet benefits, or a paternalistic worrier who wants to feed people. Better to say “What seeing is x and y, and that has to stop. Do whatever you need to solve it, etc, but if it helps, it seems to happen when you haven’t eaten though you’d know better than me”.
I’m hypoglycemic: she’s a grown adult woman who needs to take care of this herself. Frame it as a work problem, but make it clear that the solution is hers to find.
I am too, and this makes some days really difficult when I forget to plan for food or if the day goes longer than I thought. I have literally driven from store to store looking for something to eat and not being able to make up my mind because my brain doesn’t function properly without food. But yep, that’s my problem and I don’t make it other people’s ever. But I do get to a point where I literally can’t make a decision. It’s not fun.
Oh, yeah, once the brain fog sets in from the low blood sugar it’s really hard to figure out what to do. But that’s why there’s always something stashed for me to have, be it granola bars or and apple or those little peanut butter containers. It does occur to me it’s easier for women though, since there’s more likely a purse around to stash food into.
Normalise the fact that bags are for everyone!
Seriously.
I have a back pack that I use for days when I know I will be in one place for a while (like hospital waiting rooms), and I have a laptop case that I take to work with me. But it would be nice to just have one bag that can hold things I use all the time that I can just grab and go. Snacks? Check. Allergy meds? Check. Tissues? Check. Pens, pencils, and notepads? Check.
I’d rather normalise big pockets for everyone! Having everything important like money phone ID in a single place is great for thieves. It’s much harder to pick pockets and less chance of them getting everything.
Yep, this is why I have candy everywhere at all times
I’ve been pregnant and needed to keep snacks around so I didn’t get nausea. It’s still your own thing to deal with.
“Frame it as a work problem, but make it clear that the solution is hers to find.”
Perfect, and that exact formula should pop up daily here!
To that end: “I’ve seen a pattern of irritability from you, and from what I’ve seen it’s driven by hunger. It really gets in the way of professionalism – having needed conversations and getting things done with you is harder when you’re hungry. I need you to address this problem of inattention. How you resolve it is up to you, but you need to resolve it.”
This is absolutely a conduct issue.
if she’s willing to snap at her coworkers she’ll snap at a client or customer which could cost the company money. Our office manager did this as part of her people pleasing “dedication”. Wouldn’t take a lunch or would take a short lunch and tattle if we took our *GASP* whole allotted hour.She passed out once because her blood sugar crashed and our boss made it a point to tell her she isn’t getting hero points by not feeding herself which is basic activity of daily living.
Is it possible she’s having financial problems and doesn’t have a lot of food options at home? Meal planning is difficult when times are hard financially.
If she can’t afford food, something is either really wrong with the company’s pay – as in underpayment – or else something very off is going on in her life (like a family member spending all the money on drinking or someone’s medical expenses are so high it takes money out of the food budget).
Nothing in the letter suggests this.
At all.
That doesn’t explain why she turns down the OPs offers of food.
Exactly.
Plenty of people choose to utilize ‘avoid eating’ as a dieting plan. If you’re focused on getting your calories down, and your boss offers you a snack without specifying you are being a beastly employee clearly suffering from low blood sugar I can certainly see why employee would refuse.
I have great hopes that my young adult son will eventually figure out that YES, he does get HANGRY when his blood sugar drops. He can’t see it when he’s IN the episode, but he’s getting somewhat better about realizing that he’s hungry and preventing them. It’s distinct enough that I won’t have a serious conversation with him until after I’ve made sure that he has eaten. He still doesn’t believe me when he is having a hypoglycemic episode – but part of that is because he’s somewhat irrational when he’s in one.
So, my suggestion would be – tell the coworker (at a time when they are NOT in an episode) that this is a work problem. Point out the behaviour, set the expectation that they will keep snacks at their work station.
Personally, I had to set some rules for myself, because when I’m in a hypoglycemic episode, I do stupid things (like buy 20 of the same tshirts because I can’t decide which colour I want). I can’t make decisions while in an episode, so the moment I feel shaky / agitated / break out in a fine sweat, I stop everything and eat either cheese and crackers, or (if I’m out) a hamburger, with juice or sweet tea. Protein, carbs, and fat, essentially. The carbs kill the episode and the protein and fat keep it from restarting.
Our family has the Theme Park rule–if we are on an outing and someone’s attitude starts showing, we stop and eat. It’s worked well in several major theme parks, which is where we discovered it and had it extend to other outings.
Make sure and have the conversation at the beginning of the day, before she gets hungry and unable to focus. Offers of snacks are getting blown off because she is already past her ability to cope with her emotions and think clearly.
We’re all toddlers with a thin layer of adulthood on top – more often than we realize, a snack or a nap or ten minutes of quiet time would improve our days.
Does AAM plan a theme for the day?
Look, not eating is your employee’s issue to solve, not yours. What you can do is say “you cannot be cranky and angry to your colleagues just because you didn’t eat. You need to figure it out because it cannot continue.”
It was a big topic in our management training last week. When does it cross the line from managing to therapy or over accommodating someone? It’s the hardest part of managing for me.
Writing notes on your hand—In addition to looking disorganized and unprofessional, it makes you look as though you don’t understand how to utilize technology.
Personally, I am a written note taker and carry a notebook of some kind at all times, but that’s me. I also carry a phone, as does virtually everyone else. Phones have a multitude of solutions for scheduling, reminders, note taking, making lists, etc.
At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man: We keep hearing about how young people are the most connected and tech-aware ever, and yet we have many instances like this where they are writing notes on their hands, or ignoring email, or not understanding when to talk on a phone vs: text. Many of them really do not seem tech-savvy at all.
If I were the manager, I would also wonder what happens to those notes on someone’s hand. Are they making it to paper or computer later? And if so, why not just do it now? Maybe they don’t need them anymore and it’s okay to wash it off like it never happened. But I’d be pretty annoyed at a staff member who chose to regularly forego a notebook in lieu of their hands if they were also frequently missing deadlines, dropping tasks, losing important notes because they weren’t written down in a more permanent place.
Most of the time, if I’m writing something on my hand it’s something like “pick up prescription!” that I need staring me in the face until I do it. Once I do it, I wash it off and don’t need a record of having picked up my medication since I have the medication in its box on my (home) desk, where it’s again staring me in the face.
Yeah, I use writing on my hands as a similar last-ditch reminder for time sensitive issues that I can’t get to for several hours, things like “When you get back to the office remember that the key needs to be left on Jane’s desk, not in the key-cubby” (abbreviated as “key”)
“Pick up prescription” is just like that — a necessary change in routine that requires a reminder. It’s probably not ideal from a professionalism standard but I think it’s in “harmless quirk” territory. I do think that this is separate from the issue in the letter, where someone routinely writes meeting notes on their hands.
I had one of those jobs where “everyone’s hair is on fire all the time,” plus it involved a lot of different sub-environments. I regularly get compliments on how organized and professional I am with paper and digital note taking and calendars, but occasionally I’d have to write something on my hand because I was in the middle of tending two unrelated fires and someone ambushed me (Why yes, I am in the middle of putting bandages on someone who’s bleeding but sure, give me your phone number to call you about birthday party rentals.) Or it was something really important that had to follow me around as I went to a bunch of different places. TURN WATER OFF for example, as we can’t risk a flood.
I actually just put something where it’s not supposed to be either on my desk, or my phone in the wrong pocket. That reminds me that there is something I’m supposed to remember and that is usually enough.
In college (notably, before I was diagnosed with ADHD), I had a system of writing on my hands/arms with different types of pens/markers to match how quickly they washed off to the deadline of the task.
Smartphones have been a lifesaver, especially paired with a watch to get notifications for critical tasks. (I love todoist, but there are so many great applications and systems now).
Oh my goodness, you’re an icon. I love that.
I used to have a mentor write the names of species I repeatedly mis-identified on my arms in sharpie so I’d remember them for the rest of the week.
These are usually quick reminders for specific tasks, not something that would be referenced back to long term like meeting notes. So there’s no need to write them somewhere permanent. Like “mail” for “remember to check the mail on the way home because I’m expecting a package.” I don’t need that reminder recorded forever I just need to make sure the task happens.
Whether it is meant to be short or long term, or permanent, there are myriad better solutions than writing it on your body (Flashback to the excellent movie Memento!). Reminders on your phone can be deleted or updated at will. Pieces of paper can be saved or discarded.
To each their own, but IMO someone writing on their hand as a basic mnemonic system looks very out of touch, and will likely suffer in terms of reputation.
I’m not arguing for covering your hands in notes at work, but at least for me, if I write stuff on my hands, it’s because *I’ve tried all those other techy options and they don’t work*. Phone reminders work if I have my phone with me, and don’t glance at the reminder and then immediately forget it (I’ve gotten pretty good at just hitting “snooze” until I’ve actually done the thing, but sometimes I hit the wrong button by mistake). Paper notes don’t work unless it’s something to do on the computer and I can stick a physical note to the side of my laptop, because otherwise I will not remember to look at the note. I need the reminder physically attached to my body and visible.
I realize this may sound pathetic, but this is the way my brain works. I wish technology had a solution, but so far it really doesn’t when my brain is in a bad place. I would really appreciate it if people stopped acting like those of us with ADHD and other executive functioning deficits are somehow unaware of the existence of smartphones and notebooks.
This is why some people get to-do list tattoos!
https://norhuu.tumblr.com/post/762342250895327232/update-on-this-guy-it-healed-great-and-i-use-it
It doesn’t sound pathetic. Good for you for forging ahead with what works for you despite all the “But there is only a narrow amount of ways to exist in this world” responses.
Agreed and agreed.
I don’t care how a colleague handles their to-do list as long as it doesn’t interfere with my work. A short scribble on their hand certainly doesn’t rise to that level and I’m not sure I would even notice unless I studied their hands carefully.
Extremely same here; if I write something in a notebook or on my phone then close it, the reminder ceases to exist for me, because the ADHD gives me the object permanence of a 1 year old. If it’s something pressing that I know I’ll need to remember on the same day, an abbreviation on my hand is the only way it works, & sorry, I don’t actually care that much if people find it unprofessional, because forgetting things & not doing them is more unprofessional to me? & that’s what happens if I don’t use a system that works for me!
I know what you mean. I handed my son a list of things he needed to do with his apartment (long involved story) and he immediately folded it up and put it on a shelf, where it will stay Till the End of Time. Then I said, ‘oh wait, I have an extra clipboard at home” and put the list on it (I have an idea of what happened to *that*, but it did signal that I was to him).
If I write on my hand – which I don’t often – it’s specifically because my hand is omnipresent. I can be in a different place with different ideas and a completely different set of equipment, or whatever, and my hand is still there. Permanent isn’t really the point in that situation.
I agree, and I believe it’s because we went from a situation where people use technology to a situation where the technology uses people. When I was in high school, a computer class was about learning to program; nowadays they are often about learning to pick out a font in Microsoft Word. They never really learn to use MS Word either; out of the many colleagues I’ve had over the years, not a single one of them have ever known how to use paragraph or character styles. It’s sad.
To be honest though, it’s not like Microsoft makes it easy to use styles… it’s not a great user interface.
I would do some sketchy things to go back to early 2000 Excel. I could make that program do anything I wanted. Had a class, Quantitative Methods in Geology, where our first assignment was literally “You’ve seen what Excel can do. Now you get to make it do something it can’t.” (Projections in spherical geometry aren’t quite as bad as n-dimensional statistical analysis, but close!) They nerfed the program under the guise of making it “user friendly” somewhere around 2015 or so, and it hasn’t been the same since. I do a LOT of graphs for work, and the “user friendly” nature makes my job at least 100% harder.
Can’t you still do most stuff in developer mode? Just not in online mode?
It is a horrible interface. I much prefer LibreOffice, which at least tries to make things less onerous. But at work, I’m stuck with Word.
I don’t write notes on my hand personally, though I do put tape on my fingers as reminders, sometimes with writing on it.
But, especially speaking as someone with ADHD, a notebook or phone would not accomplish the same thing at all. The point of writing on your hand is to have your notes right in front of your face so you CAN’T forget them. It’s not that people can’t figure out how to use a piece of paper or are tech illiterate, and it feels unfair to accuse them of that. It’s that these methods don’t solve the problem.
A phone is especially bad imo – with a notebook you can at least keep it always open to the right page, but a phone usually has the screen off and you need to turn on the screen + open notes app + open the specific note in order to view your notes. And a phone is a horrible distraction box supreme. These might sound like little problems, but when you really struggle with memory, these things matter. I can’t even remember that I wrote a note or need to check it. Carrying around a notebook seems impractical because then I only have one hand to do things.
I’ll admit I don’t understand why notes on hands is “unprofessional.” But I wonder if there are any ideas for more “professional” alternatives that actually solve the problem of needing your notes to be immediately visible and still have your hands free to do your work?
I’ll admit I don’t understand why notes on hands is “unprofessional.”
I think it’s the same reason that wearing a shirt with holes in it is unprofessional, in that it contributes to a sloppy appearance. Obviously there are jobs where that doesn’t matter, but I’d guess in most it does. It’s also an issue of possibly smearing ink (depending on what you’re using to write it) and the notes become illegible due to sweat and use of hands.
To be clear, I understand your POV on why a hand is better than a notebook, but I would keep looking for something else.
This may not work, but it’s a serious suggestion: A wristband or armband that covers the forearm. I see NFL players use them, they have a Velcro cover and underneath under a protective plastic cover is their plays to call. I believe they make them so notes can be written on them like a white board.
This would be an odd look, maybe carried off better with long sleeves or a jacket, but would be more professional than someone writing on their hand.
When I’ve been particularly scattered I’ve written notes on Postit notes and put them on the bottom of my monitor. It’s not terribly unprofessional–most people in my office do it, in fact–and it keeps things front and center when you’re at the computer, at least.
You can also look up “Wrist Notepads”. They come in a variety of designs, and are often rewritable. Amazon has a 9 pack for $12, and there seems to be a reasonable variety of styles from a variety of companies. It’s a bit odd, I’ll admit, but more on the “Quirky, I’d never have thought of that” side of odd, which people quickly get used to.
Oh, that’s awesome; thank you for the wrist notepad suggestion! This is for once a productivity tool that I actually didn’t know existed and it really does fit well in the “I need this attached to my hand” niche.
I’ve also seen write-on-wipe-off slap bracelets with to-do list templates.
That also sounds neat for field work. Always annoying when tech gives up in the middle of nowhere thanks to inclement weather or lack of connection. While the trusty clipboard is of course helpful, it can be a bit cumbersome when you need your hands free as well.
I write notes on my upper thigh with a sharpie. Does not show and i have a reminder every time I go to the bathroom.
( I would not drop my pants at work however.)
I also have alarms on my phone.
I would lose the notebook in 10 minutes. When we wore scrubs at work, so many vital signs written on legs, bed sheets, paper towels.
Yeah, you’d think with today’s generation, and let’s face it, the two before them, that adopted the ability to be dependent on that metal and glass thing they stare at more than anyone/anything else, you’d think they’d also learn how to say, “Hey (Siri/Google/Alexa), remind me to do (task X) at (time Y)” into said metal and glass thing they stare at more than anyone/anything else. No need to scribble things on your palms, even if it means being even more dependent on said metal and glass thing.
I feel blaming this on generational issues and accusing a generation of both being tech obsessed and too incompetent to use phone reminders is really unfair. It’s unlikely most people who do this don’t know how to use phone reminders – it’s much more likely that, like me, phone reminders don’t work for them.
They have to come up with something, regardless of generation. Hence why I didn’t just call this a Gen Z problem regarding phone dependency: Millenials and Gen Xers like me are just as guilty. No one has instant recall, but jotting notes on one’s palm comes off as disorganized, at least to me. I’m sure everyone’s heard of a notepad/notebook. I’m sure many of them grew up watching Blue’s Clues and Steve, Joe or Josh writing in his “handy dandy notebook.” :-)
You don’t write it on the palm. Back of hand, Silly
Right, the problem with reminders or notes on your phone is that you have to *remember they’re there/ remember to look at them.* For some of us, that will not work. Alarms are better, but for those of us who are capable of forgetting what we’re doing *while in the process of doing it*, they’re still just not as good as having a reminder in constant view that we can’t turn off, out down or walk away from.
People of any age are capable of stopping rather than snoozing an alarm, having a timer go off and not really noticing because we’re focused on what we’re doing, or forgetting to grab our phones on our way out the door.
For what it’s worth, I’m on the cusp between Boomers and Gen X. It’s not just “today’s generation,” whatever that means–I’m still here.
Generation Jones, represent!
I use a lot of alarms, plus Outlook at work, plus my household slack, plus my phone calendar, plus random postits. How did I keep up before all the tech? Sometimes I didn’t.
Not all of us who have been tech-savvy since the days of the C> prompt want to have our devices listening to us all the time. Some of us also recognize that the metal and glass thing can turn into a brick if it runs out of battery, at which point it does zero reminding.
Really no need to dismiss entire generations for doing things the way that works for them, especially given that each person in a generation is an actual individual.
It would be a logical guess that generations raised on technology would find it more intuitive to use said technology to help them remember things. The fact that this is not 100% the case, and there are people who do not use technology or a notepad to keep track of things is not an indicator that something is wrong with those generations. It’s an indicator that some people have additional variables to contend with that you haven’t accounted for. People do the things they do for a reason and sometimes you’re not gonna know the reason.
When I worked as an RN in a very busy ER, my husband would know how good or bad my day went by how much writing was on my hands and arms when I got home from a shift. During a code sometimes you don’t have a second to log in to your computer or find a piece of paper. I have logged entire codes I was running on my left arm…and the bedsheets…and even my scrubs leg. Sometimes we were short and didn’t have someone to scribe, it was all hands on deck. Then I would transcribe my shorthand to the patient’s chart.
I’ve had the opposite experience.
Writing a note with a pen during a meeting on a notepad = professional , looks like I’m engaged and listening
Pulling out my phone and tapping away at it during a meeting = unprofessional , looks like I’m mentally checked out, possibly surfing the web
I’ve worked at places that have badges for quite some time. I put a tiny blank sticky note on the back of my badge, and use that for jotting down tiny quick notes. It works well for me!
Borrowing this
From what I’ve heard, while Gen Z is great at newer tech (social media, video editing), they fall short at old-school tech (Word Docs, file storage). This seems like a case of the latter.
To be as fair, I rarely check my email these days because it’s all just spam or ads from companies I do buy from that send me fliers 3x a day, or LinkedIn letting me know so and so thinks whatever about blah. I don’t blame young people for not being into email as a communication method, especially as social media is so much bigger and more integrated jnto other platforms.
I’m an elder millennial and went through adopting email and eagerly using it, and now it joins phone calls and physical mail in the category of “almost nothing of personal value arrives this way”.
I’m C-Suite, and not particularly young, and I write notes on my hand occasionally. I admit I would probably talk to someone if they made a habit of it, but the practice in general doesn’t bother me.
The senior exec/big boss used to do this all the time and no one ever thought it looked bad or unprofessional. He used to be a hospital doctor and was one of the world’s leading specialists in tropical medicine before changing industries, and an extraordinary person.
It’s a non-issue to most people.
I’m not familiar with the legal requirements mentioned for an unpaid internship, but if those are not too onerous I don’t think it would be so terrible to hire your colleague’s kid.
Yes, it’s giving them a leg up in a way, but if they don’t do it nobody will, and I don’t see how that benefits anyone.
The legal requirements vary state by state & country by country, but a good rule of thumb is that you can only have an unpaid internship if the intern will be getting more out of it than you are.
Aside from legal requirements, there’s also the requirements for the school program. Coordinating an adequate course credit-worthy internship is not something you do without planning ahead.
The norm for students pursuing the entry level, doctorate of physical therapy is 3, 12- week unpaid clinical rotations.
That means working the full time schedule of their preceptor, studying during off hours to prep for each day, probably taking another class online at the same time, and still paying full tuition.
Even tougher is that it is wholly expected that for at least 1 (but usually 2) of those rotations they will have either monstrous commutes or need to temporarily relocate near their assigned location – while also still paying for wherever they live while they are on campus…
My clinic is considered a gem for student assignments because at least we let students eat for free in our hospital cafe. In solid placements the preceptors really go to great lengths to truly provide clinical education as an extension of academics. In other spots though, a student is treated more like a warm body in the therapy mill.
The system is not great, but for now it is all we have. Placements have gotten tougher through the years though because it relies solely on the altruism of the clinical sites. Preceptors and their organizations get nothing tangible in return for taking on students beyond.
Sorry, I’m not following what is meant by “if they don’t do it nobody will, and I don’t see how that benefits anyone.”
Do you mean better for the privileged kid to get an internship than for no one to get an internship? I’m not sure that’s the case, assuming that the privileged kid will be competing for jobs against less privileged kids.
That is what I meant, but I see where you’re coming from. If LW feels it’s their place to ensure a hypothetical level playing field then that’s fine. It’s also alot of work to have an intern, especially in a workplace not set up for them
They are onerous though. For an unpaid internship at a for-profit business to be legal, the intern needs to be benefitting more than the business, Essentially, it’s a training program you’re doing as charity. It’s a lot of work!
Also, part of the point of an internship is networking. Daughter needs to practice that for herself, not just get her mom to find her a spot.
It’s creating an even bigger problem for underprivileged people who already have to compete against people with privileges they didn’t earn.
That poor privileged kid… where oh where will they ever get that extra hand up?
I don’t know how privileged the kid is, the mom is a colleague of the LW after all. All that happened is this kid’s mom sent a note. IMO it wouldn’t be some miscarriage of justice if LW wanted to do the internship, that’s all.
There are several avenues of privilege that we can observe through what OP has said here. 1. The kid is in college. Yes, there are programs that enable less privileged folks to get in but having a college education is inherently a type of privilege. 2. OP has looked at the situation and evaluated that this kid’s mom having a connection to the company is as a result of privilege, which I assume means OP knows some things about the type of job it is that we don’t. There are many jobs that are themselves a type of privilege, or that put you in proximity to greater privilege. 3. The kid not only *has* a mother but has a mother who is involved and supportive enough to track down an internship for her. That’s far from universal. And most importantly 4. The internship would be UNPAID. This means the kid can afford to work an internship for a number of months without having to worry about paying bills. That is a HUGE privilege that most college students can’t afford.
The other way this is inequitable is that it’s based on pure luck, not on merit in any way. If there was a merit-based program to evaluate who’d be a good fit for an internship, that would remove one layer of inequity. But if this kid got the internship it would only be a result of who she was related to, which means all the higher performing, more dedicated students who aren’t related to an employee were denied an opportunity through no fault of their own.
“1. The kid is in college. Yes, there are programs that enable less privileged folks to get in but having a college education is inherently a type of privilege.”
Not always. College does not always make it easier for someone to get a job. There are many employers who will not hire people because of a lack of work experience, even people with college degrees. This causes entry-level people to struggle to find jobs even if they have a degree. Plus, to make things worse, many college students are stuck with debt for years. This idea that college is a privilege is not reality for a lot of people who have college degrees and are still struggling.
And just in general, not specifically toward you, I’m tired of people who look at other people and say “they have this thing that makes them privileged!” without actually knowing much about their life. Unless you know the details of someone’s life, you don’t know how much they’ve struggled. Something that may seem like a “privilege” may not have benefited the person at all, or maybe that person has something else in their life that causes a struggle that you don’t know about. People love to jump to conclusions about others without knowing the details of their lives.
“The other way this is inequitable is that it’s based on pure luck, not on merit in any way.”
But there is no internship anyway. The internship doesn’t yet exist. It’s not like an internship exists, is open for applications, and LW is choosing their friend’s daughter over all other applicants just because of the personal connection. That would be unfair. But that’s not what’s happening, because this is an internship that would only be created for this one person. No one else will get that opportunity if the daughter doesn’t. And the daughter will go to another internship that IS open for applications, so if she applies and gets it, she takes a spot away from someone else who applied and would have gotten that!
When done properly, hosting an unpaid intern takes a significant amount of staff time and resources. It’s cheaper to just pay them wages.
If anyone else is in the position of LW4, who seems sincerely baffled at the writing-on-hands thing: when I do it, it’s because my brain is so scattered that if I don’t have it literally staring me in the face, it’s going to vanish into the aether. This is also why I write things on post-its and then put them on my laptop, rather than just using the many productivity tools available on the laptop. Writing something in a notebook or digital to-do list only helps if I remember to look at the notebook. These days phone alerts really help, but I also don’t want my phone buzzing or beeping all day and annoying both me and my coworkers.
So if I’m having a really spacy day and just absolutely need something on my hand, I’ll write it on the underside of my wrist, or just inside my shirt cuff if I’m wearing long sleeves. That way I’ll see at least part of it pretty frequently, but it’s much less obvious to a casual observer. Still a thing I try to avoid, and I’m lucky to be in a position where nobody particularly cares if I look polished, but it’s a reasonably happy medium.
While I don’t write on my hands, I do use post its or other small notes in a similar way.
I realized only a few years ago that in my brain, if something is in a notes app, or any app, or filed away or even in a slot on my desk that says “do today” it’s like it not longer exists. It’s like an adult form of object impermanence. Even a notepad used 100% for to-do lists becomes background noise or forgotten or goes missing.
But a post it note stuck somewhere that I can’t avoid it is useful. (I also will put things out of place as a memory aid … “why is this can of olives on my kitchen table? Oh, that’s right, I put it there to remind me to call the plumber.” because writing “call the plumber” on a to-do list will both remove the task from my working memory (because I wrote it down) and make it become invisible because I will not notice the to-do list in my environment)
Come to think of it, writing on my hand might work, except I suspect I would find the marks on my hand distracting and want to wash it off ASAP.
“Common object weirdly out of place” is amazingly helpful to me, too!
Including “Why on earth is the basement light on? Omg the laundry,” and “Why am I hearing the radio left on in the bathroom? Oh yeah, toilet paper not yet restocked!”
I also like “written note taped over light switch or door knob.”
Harder to use these tricks in a shared office, lol.
I’m right there with you — I used to do it more often when I had a job where I’d be out in the field, and then back in the office — if I remembered a field task in the office, or an office task in the field, I needed a reminder to say, bring in the vehicle log sheets. Check the maintenance records. Report a damaged gate.
Same. I just remember things better when they’re written on my hand (I wouldn’t have seen it as a weird thing to see on others, but have learnt today that that’s not usual).
If not actually written on me, reminders work best for me as a physical thing that can’t avoided (like putting a post-it note on the glasses I use for driving home). I do have diaries and notebooks, but I can somehow misplace them merely by putting them down on a flat surface. Hands are a bit trickier to misplace.
Thanks for the laugh that your username gave me — I needed that!
Honestly doesn’t matter what her issue is, she can’t take it out on her coworkers. She deals with her colleagues properly or she should be fired. If OP doesn’t out a stop to it they’re likely to have staff quit anyway.
Another mark in the “focus on the problem, not on the assumed cause” – people *do not like* when you reduce what they’re saying to “you sound like you need a snack.” I found this with my teenage brother during the summer when he grew several inches. He would get super hangry and would start snapping at us. Thing is, while he shouldn’t have been snapping at us over small things, he wasn’t making up problems. When we told him “sounds like you need a snack”, it sounded to him as if we were saying “your problem is not important to us, and we care more about our comfort than your comfort.” Further, it turned into a bad habit of assuming that every time he was upset it was because he was hangry – which naturally blew up in our collective faces the first time he had a major problem and felt we were downplaying it. Much was learned that summer and many apologies given.
Focus on the behavior – “Don’t snap at your coworkers” is a reasonable request. If you have a level of trust with your employee, “I’ve noticed you do this more on days when you’ve been fasting” could be something to bring up. But don’t start by assuming that it’s a food or med related issue.
As a fellow Hangry getter they sometimes need someone to remind them to eat. At work I am pretty good at making sure I have snacks and stuff but sometimes at home I get distracted and forget to eat. My wife is good at seeing the signs so will sometimes shove an apple or something in my hand
Or, you could be more self aware and not depend on others to feed you.
Or set a reminder, or post a note, or do literally anything other than making this someone else’s problem. I will take responsibility for feeding any pets or children in my orbit; I’m not doing it for another adult.
^ This!
This is an unkind response.
No it’s not. If I wanted to be in charge of other people’s snack times, I would have become a preschool teacher.
Fortunately, you are not Tom R’s wife.
That’s exactly the point though, something that works at home with your personal relationships isn’t necessarily transferrable to the workplace.
Fortunately, the LW isn’t her hangry employee’s wife, either.
I agree. Sounds like something a loving spouse might do!
Yes, it is, but the LW is not her coworker’s loving spouse, and it’s a general rule of thumb in this community to engage with the question that was actually written in about. I’m sure Tom R. is lovely. I’m sure the wife of Tom R. is lovely. I’m sure the lovely apples she is lovingly giving to Tom R. are lovely. But unless I missed a giant part of this letter, the LW didn’t marry her coworker or sign up for a lifetime of lovingly handing her snacks when she gets hangry.
I would create even more awkwardness at the office – because I would think it was my fault for not remembering to silently and discreetly hand the co-worker a snack. When someone snaps, I people-please.
It might be a family business though, in which case it could happen as you describe
There is nothing to indicate that it’s a family business? Even if it is, the employee is still an adult who is capable of taking care of herself.
…but it’s not, otherwise he LW would probably have mentioned it?
I honestly don’t understand the commentariat’s insistence on bringing up completely unrelated things and being like BUT WHAT IF THE LW WAS ACTUALLY A GIRAFFE AND HER COWORKER WAS MADE OF BEES???
That would actually make sense because as a giraffe they probably wouldn’t be able to fit into the office in the first place, so their “hangriness” wouldn’t affect the rest of the staff
It’s reality though – it’s not really appropriate to make that kind of reminder the responsibility of coworkers, especially not regularly. That’s on an adult to manage themselves in the workplace.
Ah, my husband does the same for me! Sometimes some of our wiring is a little wonky, and our loved ones lend us their reliable hunger signals and bedtime routines.
This is patently not your coworkers’ job. Manage your time better or set reminders on your phone.
(Frankly, if my boyfriend were relying on me to remind him to eat so he didn’t snap at me, I’d tell him the same thing: He’s a functional adult and needs to manage his own damned blood sugar.)
Right? I get irritable when I’m thirsty.
Ways I have solved this:
Bought several reuseable cups, including a giant Stanley
Bought a fridge with a water dispenser
Keep lots of fizzy water around
Fill the Stanley cup
Put the Stanley cup on my desk
Sip from the Stanley cup
Carry around the Stanley cup
Measure my water consumption
Ways I have NOT tried to solve this:
Made it someone else’s problem to remind me to drink water
I, the partner of a hangry person, have limited patience for managing bad moods related to hunger. I usually have an emergency snack in my bag, but beyond that it’s up to the individual capable adult to deal with their hunger and related issues. Having to deal with a hangry coworker would put me on edge.
Exactly!
The only times I’ve take on any responsibility for another adult’s eating schedule, making sure there were snacks available was when:
a) the person was a relative or friend who was ill and unable to shop, prepare their own meals for some reason or
b) I was going on a trip with friends and knew that 2 of them are “hangry when they miss a meal” people, so we all considered that when planning the itinerary
ie every day’s plan included plans for breakfast lunch and dinner and easy access to snacks (either packed with us or readily available where we were going) and no days where the plan was head out in the am with a granola bar, ramble around following our noses all day and grab a bite if we happen to come across something good. (and we still managed to have one meltdown when lunch was delayed due to traffic, a couple wrong turns* and the restaurant we’d planned on being randomly closed)
*note to self, a person prone to hangriness shouldn’t be the driver on the day you’re heading out to unfamiliar territory when a timely meal is on the line.
Also, hangry people? Do us all a favor and buy a box of granola bars* and shove one into your purse or pocket before you leave the house. It’s literally that simple.
*substitute your snack of choice before the Not Everyone Can Have Granola Bars brigade rides in
The flipside of this is that if you’re bad at regulating your own blood sugar, you need to at minimum be gracious when someone offers you food. If you snap at someone trying to problem-solve then you need to deal with your own problems.
I have literally told my coworkers at previous jobs that if I seem really grouchy for no good reason, it’s perfectly reasonable to ask me if I had eaten recently, because they shouldn’t have to put up with my terrible mood when there is an obvious solution. But I also made sure that they never really had to ask that question.
Tbh, the “I’ll offer to order her something or offer her the granola bars we have in the break room, but she brushes me off” makes me wonder if the employee could have an eating disorder. In that instance, it’s better not to comment on the employee’s eating (you can certainly have food available, but don’t question when they don’t want to eat it), focus on the workplace performance, rather than the food intake, and make sure there are accommodations to, say, leave work early to attend therapy sessions.
This happened with an employee of mine. We’d worked together for many years so I felt a little more comfortable bringing it up in the context of how it was affecting me and how I was concerned for her but not everyone can do that. Not trying to diagnose but she demonstrated textbook characteristics of orthorexia and a very toxic relationship with food. She would somehow take out her anger with feeling unwell on me, as though it was somehow the jobs fault that she was unable to function properly on the incredibly strict diet she was following. I had to make her food on occasions that I happened to have that she could eat. It was untenable. Her anger issues were a result. When I brought up her control issues with everything including food, she said she knew I was going to bring it up, so I think she may have considered that her relationship with food was unhealthy. Anyway, I gently suggested therapy and left it at that. I don’t know what she did but she is better. She still has a very strict diet and eating schedule but I can tell it’s gotten better and she now has fewer restrictions and we can go out and have a fun lunch or dinner again. Not sure if she went to therapy or not but she even recognized another coworker not eating and tried to problem solve. I wouldn’t suggest everyone go this route but I had the type of relationship with her that I felt I could at least include it in a larger conversation about her work issues. She knew it came from a place of care for her health.
That would annoy me too. No one wants to be stuck in a room with snappish irritable people, and coworkers are generally a captive audience.
I used to work with a guy like this. I started keeping snacks around, and encouraging others who worked with him to do so. Buying some pretzels or the like was a lot easier than dealing with him when he was hungry. We never made a huge deal about it, we’d just keep the snacks in the open and make sure everyone knew they were available, so it wasn’t a big thing to eat them.
Would it be possible to offer some guidance on planning, since the missing meals seems to be a planning issue? Depending on what the planning issue is, it’s either directly impacting work (ie, scrambling to get things done last-minute, poor time-management, etc) or indirectly impacting it (by annoying everyone that has to deal with this person in Hulk mode).
I disagree. The LW is not a the employee’s parent, therapist or life-skills coach. The employee is acting inappropriately at work, and it’s the LW’s job to tell them it’s not appropriate and hold them accountable.
It’s the employee’s job to figure out how to behave more appropriately, whether that’s meditation, bringing lunch, setting alarms to eat, switching medications, etc. They can ask for reasonable accommodations (e.g. a set lunch period, if that’s not too disruptive, not “feed me whenever I’m a jerk”), but this isn’t on the LW to solve.
It’s not unreasonable to coach more junior staff on time management and planning. Especially when those issues are impacting other people’s work. That is, in fact, part of managing people.
Further, the attitude “This is your problem, get it fixed and get out of my office!!” may have worked in the past (though its prevalence in sitcoms is precisely because it did NOT work), but doesn’t fly today, at least not in many offices. No one wants to work with Jonah Jameson. A more effective approach in most workplaces would be to offer to help find resources to manage the problem, or coaching to manage it.
Further, opening the dialogue may show that the issue you see isn’t necessarily the issue that needs addressed. There’s a reason why safety does a Root Cause Analysis–99.999% of the time the thing that caused the injury isn’t the actual problem, the actual problem is a deeper issue that allowed that situation to develop. By approaching this from a Root Cause perspective you remove the moralizing (and let’s be real, people are treating this as a moral issue) and could help determine the actual problem, not just the symptoms. I know someone who was like this because they were going through a messy divorce; giving them some time off basically solved the problem as far as work was concerned, by allowing the one person to focus on getting their personal life in order so they COULD plan. Another time folks realized that we’d massively overloaded a few people, to the point where no amount of planning could resolve the issue. And yeah, that guy with the blood sugar issue–by opting to look at the “Why?” instead of only the “What?” we were able to find a simple and effective solution that didn’t single him out.
This is also going to vary a lot based on what your recruitment pool looks like. If you’re in a professional field with a healthy recruitment pool, then you’re absolutely free to stick to “You are snappish. This is unprofessional. We are going to start the corrective action process and you will need to fix this to keep your job.”
If you’re in a field where your candidate quality is variable or the recruitment pool is shallow, mentoring and coaching first might be a more sensible option, even if it’s not technically your job, because you’re not guaranteed a better replacement.
I think you and I have very different definitions of holding someone accountable! I mean sharing feedback and relevant observations, setting clear expectations for acceptable behavior, and being open to the employee sharing what support they might need. If an employee seems to be going through a rough patch and they choose to disclose that it’s due to a health issue, a personal issue, etc, then by all means give as much leeway as possible without a detrimental effect on the work or other employees.
However, I think that managers should not be involved in their reports’ health or personal lives. Coaching a report on planning out a project so it’s in by the deadline? Great! Coaching a report on how to plan out when to eat so they don’t get grumpy and behave unprofessionally with their coworkers? Bringing in snacks to feed them because they can’t remember to feed themselves? That seems infantilizing/boundary-crossing to me.
When you conduct your RCA, are you keeping in mind that the cause is likely to be something private that an employee shouldn’t be asked to share with their boss?
“I think you and I have very different definitions of holding someone accountable!”
This actually explains a lot.
You appear to want to stick it to this employee–hold them accountable, maybe put them in their place. A very old-school management style; there’s a reason I named Peter Parker’s boss.
I’m not focused on holding ANYONE accountable. I’m focused on resolving the issue. The REAL issue, not just the easily-identified symptoms. At worst, by doing so I’ve given myself an opportunity to identify where flaws may be in the team’s systems–issues with workflow, unreasonable workloads or expectations, that sort of thing. These always warrant more attention than anyone gives them, and identifying problems like this is one of the tasks of a manager. If it turns out to be personal issues, sometimes that’s still something we can work on or with! Accommodations for an executive disfunction are not inherently unreasonable, for example. And if it’s 100% personal, like that divorce case I mentioned, there still may be things I as a manager can do to help–time off to get things straightened out, for example.
“I think that managers should not be involved in their reports’ health or personal lives.”
OSHA, MSHA, DOT, and a bunch of other regulatory agencies would quite strongly disagree.
“Coaching a report on how to plan out when to eat so they don’t get grumpy and behave unprofessionally with their coworkers?”
This is a situation where the story we tell ourselves determines our interpretation. You’re viewing it as “Telling a report how to plan out when to eat.” I’m viewing it as “Helping a report learn to manage workload in such a way as to allow them to take care of themselves.” It’s not always as easy as you make it sound, believe me!
I remember a job where I wasn’t able to eat until 8 pm for two weeks–no breakfast or lunch. It was due to a very specific issue on our client’s side, that meant I was the only person who could do some critical tasks that needed done for every person on a ten-person team. Was I cranky? Sure. But my manager agreed that in that case I was the victim, not the problem–and we were able to find a solution (one that I needed my manager to do, for legal reasons) that didn’t just solve the immediate issue but made future projects more efficient, because we were willing to investigate beyond “You’re an adult, deal with it.” And no, I’m not saying that is what’s happening; I’m using this example to illustrate that your method would actively harm the team.
“Bringing in snacks to feed them because they can’t remember to feed themselves?”
But that’s not what I was talking about, at all. Again, that’s just dealing with the symptoms, the easily-identified part. What I’m concerned about is why my direct report feels that they don’t have time to eat. That indicates at minimum that there is a problem with the team–and one of my jobs as a manager is to find out where that problem is and how to fix it.
“When you conduct your RCA, are you keeping in mind that the cause is likely to be something private that an employee shouldn’t be asked to share with their boss?”
Sure. We have yet to really define the possibility space and “Personal issues that the boss can’t know about” is within that possibility space. I’m not opposed to the idea that this is just a bad employee, or a poor fit, and that the best option is to let them go, either. There are points in any good RCA where you can say “Okay, this seems like the ball is in your court; let me know if you need any help, but I expect this to be resolved quickly.” I’ve seen that a few times–and the employee asked for time off, or to be allowed to temporarily work remotely, or some other reasonable and temporary accommodation to resolve the issue. Sometimes they got it, sometimes not. But the important thing is, at that point we’d KNOW. Right now we don’t, making it equally likely that this employee is in crisis because of something the company, or the team, is doing.
Right now you’re hostile to the very idea of investigating. That means you’ll never know. You are, in fact, willfully ignorant of the causes. Where you and I disagree strongest–and believe me, I strongly disagree with your approach here–is that I’m not willing to be willfully ignorant when it comes to potential threats to my team.
Yes, this!
I appreciate this comment – if as a community it is possible to support your coworkers, I personally think it is a nice thing to do. No one is FORCING anyone to parent this coworker or be solely responsible for their mood, but like… kindness is cool. I appreciate when others care about me and I enjoy caring about others. Plus, I’m a sensitive cat (when a coworker is exuding rage or other bad vibes, I don’t like that) so community support that ends up helping ME is a win-win
I used to be a teacher, and I once had a principal who had a habit of writing on her hands all the time. “It’s the one notepad I can never lose!” she would say. It looked so unprofessional coming from someone in a leadership position. You are responsible for the education of 400 middle schoolers and you can’t keep track of a notepad? Not a good look. (She was also one of the worst principals I ever had the misfortune to work for. I still have bad dreams about that place.)
To this day, when I see someone write on their hands in a professional environment, it sends me back to the time and place. It’s one thing to jot down a phone number while you’re on the subway, but come on–you’re in an office, literally surrounded by office supplies.
FWIW, they recently started stocking reporter’s notepads in the supply closet at work and these things are AMAZING! Big enough to take quite a few notes, small enough to easily slip in the pocket of your lab coat.
I like the sketch notebooks Walmart sells. There’s small moleskin-style books for on-the-go note taking, which easily fit into pockets, and larger hard cover books for in-office note taking. I like the half-sheet (8.5×5.5) size better than letter paper for some reason, and since they’re unlined I can set them up however I want. And they’re cheap enough that if I lose them, meh, I’ll get another. The paper is a bit rougher than something like a Composition notebook, because they’re intended to be used with pencils to sketch pictures, but I’ve rarely had any issues with them.
You can see a difference in how people treat you when you sit down with a few pens and a hard-cover notebook, as opposed to random scraps or writing on your hand.
I’ve since treated myself to some really fancy notebooks (a new one every year), but Michael’s has some nice plain ones for like $6. They’re A5, hard cover, and come in tonnes of colors. I prefer dotted to totally blank, since it’s unobtrusive enough to be flexible but still keeps my writing straight.
At Michael’s, I recommend the Artist’s Loft Arist Level 2 Journals. Beautiful notebooks, slightly more expensive but they go on sale a lot.
Oh! I have some of those! They are great.
There’s no mention of this, but is it possible that the employee is just super strapped for cash, and can’t afford groceries?
I enter this into the fray because I worked with an intern who wasn’t paid, and in his senior year of college. He was living with several roommates to keep costs down, and he cut all kinds of corners just to be able to take public transit to his internship. I realized just how food insecure he was when he took several leftover sandwiches, pieces of fruit, salads, bags of chips, etc., home after a catered meeting. I didn’t want to embarrass him, so I ramped up how many meetings were catered to basically all of them, and started “ordering too much food” for meetings going forward. How weird that his food allergies & preferences were always covered with the food that was ordered for meetings. Luck of the draw, I guess/s
However, if LW’s employee isn’t food insecure, none of this matters, and Alison’s advice is perfect – you can’t force her to eat, but she does need to have a good attitude while at work, and she can remedy that however she needs to.
This person is not an unpaid intern, though, and at some point their personal finances are not their employers’ business (i.e. this invites their boss to comment on any spending that seems non-essential that could be used for food).
Unfortunately food insecurity is often invisible and it’s not going to be appropriate to ask about it. Since offers of free food are being turned down by the employee, it just has to be addressed as an attitude issue. Unless leaving communal snacks out regularly won’t cause issues (and we’ve seen a lot of letters as to how that can go wrong.)
Employee brushes off LW’s offer to order food/the readily available food in the break room. Maybe employee has a mental hangup about “I must pay for my own food” or not accepting charity/perceived pity, but it’s still on employee to do what they must so that hunger-induced horrible mood doesn’t splash all over coworkers.
You’re a really kind person. I always tried to make sure the interns got first crack at any leftover snacks or food.
Given that the coworker is refusing food, I really doubt that’s the issue.
You are a hero. That’s all.
The mention of using your hand for a note writing spot… Can I say that there are exceptions? My father used to work for the phone company. Being several feet up on a phone pole, it was much easier to write on his hand, than dig out paper, which, depending on the day, could end up a soggy mess, or blowing with the wind. But for indoor work, yes, I suspect notepads would look a tad more professional…
I used to work with a bunch of diesel mechanics. When they would look up part numbers, they would write the relevent numbers on their hands before leaving the computer terminal to go to the parts shelves. Then, by the time often greasy repair job was finished, the ink would be worn off their skin, and they’d be ready to jot down the next part number for the next job. They were also very particular about their pens. They much prefered click pens to the kinds with separate tops, because they always lost the caps.
You understand that punishing someone and refusing them an opportunity just because some other people might not be able to do that is exactly the kind of discrimination you’re complaining about?
The internship doesn’t even exist, so it’s not punishment to not take this person on as an intern. Also, no, not giving someone something because they have connections is NOT the same as the discrimination folks who come from underprivileged/underrepresented backgrounds face.
That’s not punishing them; it’s just refusing to give them an extra boost up the ladder when they already have more privilege than most people about to start their careers.
Thank you for this post. Deciding to do or not do something based on skin color or perceived privilege is in my mind a form of discrimination.
It isn’t “perceived privilege” – it’s an actual practical advantage they have by luck which not everyone has. (I.e. a relative in a steady job who’s willing to ask around for them.)
Of course a lot of business decisions are made via family/friend networking like that. But Alison and the OP aren’t wrong that it perpetuates unfairness. You might know someone yourself who would’ve been really good at something but didn’t have the right connections to get their chance.
This is such a weird take. If there was an already open internship position, and the coworker was refusing to hire or consider the daughter because of the connection there, that would be one thing.
But this is an internship that does not even exist! If the LW wanted to offer an internship and actually had the time for it, they could write it up and post it somewhere and the daughter (and anyone) could apply and LW could chose whoever seemed best. But you’re saying the better way to do it is just offer it to whoever asks? That’s pretty silly.
The daughter/mom are asking for a special favor, it’s not a punishment to not give someone a favor. Expecting it though… I believe that’s called entitlement.
So in your mind, deciding not to *create a new internship from scratch* only available to students who don’t need to work is the same as racism? Fascinating.
Would me choosing to give money to a food pantry but not to Jeff Bezos also be discrimination, in your mind?
You’re making it sound like you think the daughter is entitled to this favor, which is really weird.
I think you’ve got the mad about an imaginary issue. Even if this was a listed, existing opportunity, the issues folks have brought up about the unpaid nature still stand. The issue of mommy calling someone for precious really still does exist. We have no exposure or knowledge about precious’ skills beyond whom they are birthed by.
THANK YOU for what you said about unpaid internships!
Someone who writes on their hands all day and leaves it there is obviously not washing their hands very often. Yuck.
Or very well.
I KNOW! So gross
My youngest (17 with ADHD) writes herself homework notes using special “tattoo” skin markers that are designed to stay pretty well and are nontoxic. The notes survive repeated handwashing but can be washed off the wrist with a little effort.
Can you shed your judgemental attitude with the same ease?
This is kind of silly, what is more likely? That someone is using a special kind of pen that most people haven’t heard of, or that they’re doing the sadly super common thing of not washing their hands properly?
Regardless it’s always smart to assume that stuff other people are touching is possibly gross and act accordingly by washing your own hands.
Depends on the pen. Some ink is hard to wash off.
I was surprised to have to scroll this far for this issue. Lots of writing on your hands tells me… you don’t wash your hands. I thought we had a pandemic about this?
LW3: I work at a significant nonprofit in a passion field, and we struggle with this all the time. I’ve discouraged our company from making space for connected interns, for all the reasons Alison laid out.
However, we were finally able to square this circle by accepting a placement of an intern from a local trade association. They are paying the intern (something resembling a living wage no less!), and they ran the open, equity-focused screening process. All we have to do is find meaningful work for them for a few weeks (not a hard task).
If you have work for an intern but not a budget or a process, do you have a local trade association you could collaborate with?
The work experience program of my state’s vocational rehabilitation department is similar (except it’s minimum wage). I wasn’t able to find a placement but in theory it’s a good way for someone with employment barriers to get paid experience.
4: People still do this in the era of smartphones?
Sometimes, it’s a lot of work to pull out your phone, unlock it, scroll to find the note-taking app, open the app, and write the note. (Plus, if someone has ADD/ADHD, looking at your phone might be the last thing you want to do in the middle of your work day.)
But yeah, I get it. There are better solutions. If you’re not going to use your phone to write something down, just get a little notepad. This is pretty old technology at this point.
Or just go real old school with a slate and some chalk :)
But also, do they NEVER wash their hands throughout the day?
that’s just kinda gross to think about
Personally, I really don’t get why we are giving colleagues hands this level of scrutiny? I feel like this is a similar thing to where we ask children to show us their ‘listening’ posture, guaranteeing that some kids won’t actually listen to anything because all their executive function goes into ‘listening’ . Actually same for adults. While it may give the *appearance* of disorganisation, is appearance or actual delivery more important? I get that in a client facing role one may want to present a certain appearance but I am in favour of letting people organise their work in a way that supports them to be most effective. Plenty of people have explained why someone might be writing on their hands. A person might be well aware of how it presents, and choose to be doing it anyway.
Some of the things I do probably look slightly odd, or disorganised, but fortunately my employer/ manager trust me to find my way to excel in my role. I certainly make a judgement call about how I may be perceived, but sometimes it’s worth it. Certain received wisdom about organisation doesn’t work for me, I wasted far too much of my life trying to abide by it.
Also, everyone saying ‘do you wash your hands’ have surely not tried to remove biro recently? I swear 2 happy birthdays would not remove
It really depends on your skin type. I have relentlessly oily skin and even permanent marker will wash off pretty quickly (I only write things on my hands if it’s something I need to do in the next few hours). If you have drier skin it absorbs the ink better and it’s going to be harder to wash off.
I’m one of those adults. You want listening posture? You got it. I’ll walk away afterwards with no idea what was said, but I looked attentive and made appropriate noises when required.
This crops up for me occasionally when I’m making notes because I know I’m in no state to remember anything much. Whoever is talking will say “no need for that, this is just a casual chat”. Which is fine, but they need to be honest about me not being expected to retain anything and they often are not. So I’ve taken to noting down afterwards “Bob dropped past about 2:30pm but said not to take notes” so that if it does come up later I have a record.
(this is normally when I’m deeply engaged in the thinking part of my job and I’m desperate to get back to it before I completely lose state)
Truly, some people in these comments need to touch grass. I cannot imagine getting so wound up about the presence of ink on another person’s hands.
I’m with you here, and find the direction in the comments frustrating – especially the condescending “but they could use a notebook! or an app!” It would be really nice if people judged more by the outcomes instead of the method. Are things falling through the cracks? Is the person flaking out and missing things they ought to be doing? No? Then their system must work for them, and it’s pretty damn frustrating to have someone tell you that you ought to change it just because they’ve don’t like how it looks.
It’s especially weird in conjunction with letter about being hangry, where tons of comments are suggesting the person might possibly have appetite loss due to medication/food insecurity/an eating disorder/etc. etc. So for behaviour where there’s a real measurable negative impact on your coworkers we can fall over ourselves to be sympathetic and excuse them, but for one that really doesn’t negatively affect anybody we’re going to be judgemental and assume the person has never heard of a notebook before?
(I have ADHD and to-do lists are a perennial struggle; I’ve tried various apps and notebooks and they pretty much never work for my brain. I mainly manage with post-it notes and throwaway paper lists. I don’t write on my hands, but maybe I should start… if only, as the comments section makes clear, it wouldn’t immediately open me up to judgement.)
Somehow “notes written on hand” person brought back memories of a colleague who wrote on the hood of his truck in lieu of having paper/clipboard on hand. His “system” was especially ineffective when a client wanted a copy of the information (this was before phone cameras were available). It was a bit like his personal portable whiteboard, and so odd to observe. If he needed to “erase” something, he licked his hand and wiped away the writing. Icky!
Aw this is such a charming ‘country’ vignette, love it
I used to work as a zookeeper and it was pretty normal for us to write notes on our hands. It was also pretty normal for us to have actual poop on our clothing, though, so your mileage may vary.
I’ve seen drillers write notes in the mud on the side of their rigs, and I’ve drawn maps in the dirt with a stick before on jobsites. So yeah, part of this is absolutely going to depend on your role.
I would say that if you’re in a white-collar job writing on one’s hand is generally a bad look, though. Maybe you can get away with it–everyone’s got a quirk or two–but in general it’s going to come across as juvenile and disorganized in ways that make you look incapable of handling the work.
One more wrinkle: some people don’t recognize all their hunger signals and are sticklers for not eating when they’re “not hungry.” I have a relative who’s gruesomely rude in the morning, then pleasant and contrite after lunch. She prides herself on not eating breakfast because she’s “not hungry in the morning”, meaning her stomach isn’t growling and she doesn’t have a taste for anything, but she can’t or won’t connect the dots that her foul moods mean she is hungry in the morning without knowing it.
Re: asking back one spouse and not the other.
Does the LW intend to eliminate Pam’s position or hire a replacement? If Jim’s being professional, he’ll understand if LW finds a better candidate, but it’s possible he’ll get offended that Pam was passed over. LW shouldn’t take one bad employee to keep a good one, but they should be prepared to replace Jim if he figures out what happened and takes it badly.
Focus on the behavior rather than the eating/hangriness. I fast much of the day, yet manage not to blow up at people. Everyone is in charge of their own moods and reactions.
I once had a boss who was constantly dieting. He would just drink black coffee all day and was constantly in a foul mood. Once, when I first started, I got yelled at for something that my predecessor did incorrectly. He would regularly schedule meetings with the whole department during lunch and not provide lunch (so he would be distracted from eating) and then get mad when people would eat at their desks after the meeting. Unsurprisingly, the turnover was high. I lasted a year and a month.
Letter 3 – internships and equity. You can’t change a structural issue (unpaid internships perpetuating inequity etc) with individual actuon, but that doesn’t mean just doing nothing about it, and LW is quite rightly questioning whether this is the right thing to do. The other part of it is that as others have said, unpaid internships are mainly for the benefit of the intern (rather than the company) and require significant time and resource investment. This isn’t an official internship program so LW would be in essence diverting company resources to this in order to do a favour to someone’s family member. Looked at from that angle it seems clear to me that the internship shouldn’t happen. If the org sees value in unpaid internships more generically, it should be run officially with a selection process. I also think the chances are high that the colleague/mom has already tried to get an unpaid spot for her child at the other location and been rebuffed…
I had a grandboss who might have been like that. His baseline was already grumpy, and he was known to yell in meetings. By coincidence, we figured out that if there were cookies, he would eat a few and be much calmer.
Of course, it would have been correct to tell him to get a grip on his emotions. But nobody wanted to deal with that, so we just happened to have snacks in meetings if we needed him to agree on something.
I know this is an old letter (from 2020 iirc) but I would implore anyone who has the capacity to take on an intern who needs to complete an internship for college credit to please do so.
A lot of the time these internships are required to graduate but they’re not always arranged by the college, or the relevant licensing body, and the real inequity arises when people with connections can get an internship and those who don’t have to compete for the few that have an application process, approach relevant businesses, or delay their graduation until they can complete the requirement.
Usually where an internship is required for college credit (or towards a license of some kind) there are special regulations allowing it to be legally unpaid or not paid at minimum wage, which of course is not ideal, but there is still an exchange of something of value (college credit!!! someone’s future career!!) and as such, an intern in that position isn’t limited to observing and getting coffee and can be covered under liability insurance.
But it really really sucks to watch all the rich white people get internships at their parents’ work and have to make your parents beg their network to see if they know someone who knows someone who can help, while sending off applications to various companies with most of the rest of your class and wondering if you’ll be able to graduate.
You can always allow someone to keep their part-time job or whatever they’re doing to survive while they’re studying; if they need to leave early then you can use the time they’re not around as focus time for the duration – but turning someone down because you’re worried about their finances (something you are not generally legally required to do, and which you can safely assume they can manage given they’re able to study without completely starving to death) when their college degree is quite likely at stake is not an ethical win in any world… quite the opposite.
This makes me think of a way the LW or someone in that position could balance equity. First, take on this intern now… then when she’s finished, if the experience as positive for both LW and student, reach out to the school to let them know you are willing to host future internships, and are specifically interested in hosting students who seem to be struggling to find an internship because they lack access to traditional channels.
The answer to OP’s question about internship equity feels a bit off-base to me. You’re denying someone an opportunity purely based on principle, where otherwise there would be no opportunity at the OP’s company at all anyway?
What if some random college student who fit OP’s particular definition of underprivileged asked the same question… then would the OP be comfortable accepting that person as an intern?
It’d make sense if there was an existing application process and OP’s friend attempted to bypass that.
It’d make sense if the reasoning was that OP really doesn’t have time for this.
Agree that it perpetuates privilege to offer an internship to a friend’s daughter (though let’s face to – that’s not uncommon in business in general, people getting jobs excuse of connections).
But this one is not really unpaid, since daughter would be getting college credit for it. Same way I did internships in college – I got experience, and I also got college credits, so it was not really any different than doing schoolwork.
The trend I really find disturbing (which was not happening way back when I was in college) is having “internships” for college grads. That’s just a backdoor way to get ultra low-paid (or unpaid) labor.
Food at work is a tough issue. I’m disabled and can’t drive, among other things. I also have some food allergies. I can’t tell you the number of jobs where I found it almost impossible to eat because of logistics – and my trip to work on public transit with a walker was such that I couldn’t bring any perishable food with me. If a company doesn’t supply food, I often don’t eat – and sometimes that includes 2+ hours each way of commuting. It’s one reason why work at home is so much better for me. I’ve also had companies complain if I nosh throughout the day, but having snack-like non-perishable is often what I can manage to bring. Some also don’t want folks to keep food at work. This is an area where I find I often can’t win.
I’m so frustrated and confused by the answer to #3! LW does not have enough money to pay an intern, and does not have time to open up a formal hiring process open to the public, and has some projects that would be good learning opportunities for an intern, yet it would somehow be morally wrong for LW to create a one-time unpaid (but for school credit) internship to this person??
This is so frustrating because when you’re a college student or graduate, it’s SO HARD to get jobs because of a lack of work experience. Internships are an important way to gain this experience, whether paid or not. LW’s friend’s daughter may have to face that difficulty of not being able to find a job without experience, so this internship may have really helped her. But now, because LW is not creating this internship for their friend’s daughter, friend’s daughter will either not do any other internships, or will get a different internship somewhere else…
…If friend’s daughter does not get another internship, she may have more difficulty getting a job after graduation, but on the other hand, if she DOES find another internship somewhere else, she takes away a spot from someone else who would have had THAT internship opportunity!!
The decision to not create an internship for friend’s daughter does not benefit anyone. But if LW were to create the internship for friend’s daughter, both friend’s daughter and LW would benefit.
I recognize the fact that unpaid internships are problematic, but when an organization does not have the money to pay, the options are offer an unpaid internship or nothing! If more orgs offer nothing instead of unpaid internships, there will be more competition for internships that do exist (both paid and unpaid), meaning fewer people will have opportunities to get them.
In other words, paid internships are better than unpaid, but unpaid internships are better than nothing. In a situation where the only two options are “offer an unpaid internship” or “do not offer an internship,” an unpaid internship should be offered.