my “on-site” coworker is never on-site

by Alison Green on January 27, 2025

A reader writes:

For the past 18 months, the person in my office who holds the same job title as me has had serious attendance and communication problems. I’m not talking a few times a month. I’m talking it’s a miracle if he makes it in most of five days in a week. He’ll be in four times over two weeks. I’ve created a spreadsheet to keep track, this is not exaggerating.

Our job description is very specific that in office attendance is absolutely required of us at least three days a week. Our job title has the word “on-site” in it. I prefer to work in the office five days a week because home is a distraction-filled wasteland for me, and I wouldn’t have issues if he was coming in three times a week regularly. He isn’t, though. I was hired because it was too much work for him by himself, and I’m in the office by myself all the time.

He will sometimes inform me he isn’t coming in, but he just as often won’t and just doesn’t show up. He will often say he’ll be in later, only to change his mind and just not come in at all. I’ll get an apology lunch (if he bothers to show up) or text (if he doesn’t) the next day.

The problem is that I’ve done what I’m supposed to! I checked in with him first and made sure everything is okay. I asked what I could do to help him directly. When that didn’t work, in November of 2023 (and no, that’s not a typo), I first spoke with our supervisor on this. He is in a different part of the country so doesn’t have eyes on it directly. And I’ve brought it up regularly with this supervisor (in one-on-ones) ever since.

There have been discussions between boss and coworker. My coworker shows up for a week, maybe seven days, and then starts to fall off again. He knows what he’s doing is wrong because he keeps apologizing! There have always been excuses. Sometimes, it’s a funeral for a family member (which I can’t begrudge, though his family must be massive), but most of the time it’s a tummy ache or lack of sleep. While I would want leniency in those situations, the fact that my 2024 spreadsheet has 90 entries in it means he didn’t show up a third of the year.

What makes this harder is when he’s in, we work great together! We have very similar approaches to our job and can knock out all kinds of work extremely quickly. But I’m alone most of the time. And I’m afraid to take time off because I’ve come back with stuff I’d asked him to address while I was out completely ignored.

Our supervisor has suggested a meeting with the three of us, but what is this conversation going to do that the individual ones have not? Going up another tier feels like throwing two people under the bus. My boss’s boss is further removed, and finding time to discuss with him is next to impossible. But I’m being taken advantage of! I don’t know what to do. This is easily the best job I’ve had outside of this and I’m so upset that I’m here. How on earth do I proceed?

There are two issues here: (1) it’s aggravating that your coworker is flagrantly ignoring expectations he keeps agreeing to follow, and (2) you’re afraid to take time off because he won’t do the things he’s supposed to do during that time. #1 is really between your coworker and your manager; it’s aggravating but it’s also not yours to address (and you really should stop tracking his in-office days in that spreadsheet because it’s not your job to do that and that’s just going to keep you more mired in the aggravation). But #2 is very much your business, and so are any other ways that his not being there and his lack of communication affect your work. That’s where you need to focus.

From now on when you raise it with your boss, keep your focus 100% on how this impacts your work. Your boss clearly doesn’t care as much as you do about the rest of it, so take the parts that are causing concrete problems for you and dump those in her lap. For example: “I haven’t been using PTO because in the past when I’ve come back, Cecil hasn’t covered the things he’s agreed to cover and it has resulted in ___. But I do need to take time off. Can you help me with this?”

That might mean that you need to be okay with things falling through the cracks while you’re gone — and alerting your boss to those things when you return, and not cleaning them up yourself (or if that’s unrealistic, telling your boss other priorities will need to wait so you can clean up the mess Fergus made).

But also, it’s been over a year since you started raising this problem, and it’s time to accept your boss doesn’t care as much about it as you do. You’re approaching it as if she will start managing Fergus better if only you can convince her that she needs to … but for whatever reason, she doesn’t share your take on the situation. Maybe that’s because she’s a bad manager (likely), or maybe it’s because there are things going on behind the scenes that you don’t know about, or who knows what. Regardless, you’re going to be a lot happier if you accept that this is how things are and that you’re not in a position to change them, and shift your focus solely to pieces that directly affect you and let the rest go … most especially the spreadsheet.

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{ 287 comments }

{ 287 comments… read them below }

  1. MustangSally*

    I worked at a job where some workers were allowed to work from home pre-pandemic….and others were not. It correlated to who had children. Anyhoo, this was supposed to be a very rare occasional thing but ended up being 4-5 days a week for some of my peers. However there was very urgent in person business to be conducted and I was the only face anyone saw.

    To support Alison’s advice, my keeping track of their WFH days didn’t help. What did help was when I stopped doing all the urgent coverage. “Hi! Your expert Tina works from home today, call this number! Thanks!”

    When I did this enough, managers got involved and the slippery slope of WFH was addressed.

    1. Artemesia*

      This exactly. As long as the OP does what must be done on site, the manager doesn’t care. So deliver the pain to the manager. Take PTO as is convenient for you. If things fall, let them. And if you get back and he hasn’t done the work, send it right back to him or let the manager know that if you need to do the work Clyde isn’t doing, it is going to mean X and Y are pushed back.

      And consider ‘working from home’ at least two days a week. You don’t have to do it at home. Go to a local library, or coffee shop or other spot where you can do what you need to do without the interruptions of the office. Coordinate with Clyde about when he will be in to do the office coverage. (I need to be WFH on Tuesday’s and Thursdays, so you will need to be on site then. I might be able to move one of those days with notice. What works for you?’

      1. Throwaway Account*

        I always tell my younger coworkers, pass the pain up the chain!
        There are some things you do not control

        2. Cthulhu’s Librarian*

          I always tell my reports this. “You don’t get paid enough to clean up X’s failures or mess. I do. So, if no one is in danger, just let it happen, let me know it happened, and pass it on to me.”

          Pass the pain up the chain is smoother, though. Gonna steal it.

        3. Lisa*

          What if you’re explicitly assigned to clean up a junior coworker’s messes (but aren’t their manager)? I’m in a situation right now where my manager has assigned me to check over a junior coworker’s reports before they’re sent out, but I think he’s taken this as a sign that he doesn’t have to be very careful so he’s leaving a ton of mistakes and I feel like I’m picking up a disproportionate amount of his slack. Is there a tactful way I can pass this pain up the chain…

          1. Testing*

            You can still tell him he should be more careful, even if you’re not his manager.

            If you feel you can’t, you can simply ask your own manager how he will learn not to make these mistakes if he doesn’t get feedback from either you or her.

          2. misspiggy*

            Send your manager a list of the type of errors you’re getting, and if correcting them is taking time for you, tell your manager how much. Either ask if your manager wants you to keep spending this time, or say you don’t have time to continue doing so much error correction and ask for their help fixing the situation going forward.

          3. Simone*

            I’m in a role where I do a lot of editing, and where I get the sense that someone is leaning too heavily on that I send back sloppy work with a note that this doesn’t seem ready for my eye and can they please do another pass through. Make sure they know the work will come back to them. (And let your manager know – the issue, and your approach.)

          4. AlsoADHD*

            You could advocate to your manager how much time it takes in terms of workload. That might not change the need to do it or the errors found, but it might make it feel less like “picking up slack” and more like review is a normal duty?

          5. Starbuck*

            I’d recommend telling them what they need to fix, instead of just fixing it for them, as much as possible. Find the issues but give the work back to them to correct. It’ll at least make you feel better about balancing levels of effort between the two of you.

      2. Inkognyto*

        Yep, if you cover the gaps then work is getting done and it’s less the manager’s issue.

        Take a week.

        Then take another week at a different time.

        Let those marbles roll all over the floor, and since it wasn’t your mess since it was the co-workers, let them pick them all up.

        I took 2 weeks over Holiday’s this year.

        I am the only one in my position but I do assist a role that reports to a Manager, who reports to the same Direcotor I do. I have an some input on their work due to my role, but they ask me lots of things they should know.

        They have been an FTE for 6 months and were heavily reliant on me to basically tell them what to do. They were a contractor for a year.

        At this point they should be figuring it out, and that 2 weeks forced them too. When they raised it to the Director I report too that I wasn’t around to ‘consult’ they asked what for, and it turns out the Director was like “You should be figuring this out on your own”.

        I knew it was an issue that he wouldn’t and I had raised it to his manager, who didn’t care because tasks are being done.

        So I just took a long vacation because I had not in 2024, and let the marbles fall.

        I got a IM question today “when you have time, I need a consult”. I got back to them 2 hrs later. “Oh I solved it”. Yes please more of that.

        1. Ansteve*

          You mentioned something about the time they were with the company and it got me thinking. I have been at my job since 2018. Do to a series of resignations and bad new hires around my start date,, I was the only person on the team for 3-4 months. Now our newest team member joined in late 2020 and it has been the same since. The “new guy” still will play the new guy card when it comes to mistakes. It’s frustrating because he has been at the company longer than I was when I was starting to be considered one of the skilled employees. Idk if it is like being the youngest child or something but it seems like places where they don’t have turn over, the newest employees can play that “in new” card a lot longer than in places with higher turnover.

      3. goddessoftransitory*

        I agree totally. This is a classic case of “don’t care more than your boss does.”

        If you’ve got spreadsheets and records of two years of meetings, LW, you have more than enough evidence in that direction. When you start taking your contractually guaranteed PTO it isn’t your fault if things don’t get done, and that’s been made clear multiple times. But the longer you go on not doing so and cleaning up the messes, the more your superiors are going to start logging THAT as your job, not what you are doing now.

    2. Rae*

      Love the “slippery slope of WFH”! I’m in the office 2-3 days a week but I’m also making myself available to work overtime evenings and weekends when there’s a last min crisis or rush project.

  2. HiddenT*

    LW has fallen into the classic mistake of “if I document this enough, someone will be forced to care”, but unfortunately that’s not the case. And trust me, I understand the urge, especially as a neurodivergent person who gets angry when rules are not followed, but you can’t force your boss to care more than they do.

    2. cele*

      So true. I had a vendor who was regularly messing up orders and invoices, and then lying about it or trying to blame our own staff. My manager was outraged, and asked me to document these incidents. For six months, I carefully documented and tracked everything, regularly updating my boss, and then requested a meeting at six months to go over all the information. My boss brought it all to her boss, who… could not have cared less. Like really, truly didn’t care that we were charged for items we never got, that our orders were routinely delivered wrong, or that the vendor had texted a manager that our new admin seemed “slutty.” After much frustration, I decided that I either needed to accept working with this *nightmare* vendor, or job hunt.

      1. Dontbeadork*

        Wow. Were they the sole source for something? Because that’s the only reason I see for even hesitating to say something.

    3. Strive to Excel*

      The part of documentation that is often missed is connecting what you’ve documented to why it’s important. “Coworker is rarely in office” is not a business case. “Coworker is rarely in office, resulting in X and Y not getting done” is a business case.

      And the corollary is, of course, making this your boss’s problem instead of your problem. Your documentation is backing up this: “I had to spend X time and $ after coming back from PTO because the llamas didn’t get groomed.” It shouldn’t be “I didn’t take PTO because I was worried the llamas wouldn’t get groomed” or “I worked overtime to make sure we wouldn’t have to spend $”.

    4. RC*

      the classic mistake of “if I document this enough, someone will be forced to care”

      *nods in climate science*

      Agree with the comments suggesting to focus on how it impacts you, e.g. “Cecil didn’t complete tasks X and Y which needed to be done this week so I could do Z,” rather than just “Cecil didn’t show up Tues-Fri.”

      1. Dawn*

        Whoof, I was just making that point to someone today whose argument against something was “well people shouldn’t use that.”

        I said, “You’re right, they shouldn’t, but we live in the real world, and believe me, the vegan climate activist knows a thing or two about how much ‘should’ statements motivate people.”

        1. Should is Make Believe*

          I, a vegetarian environmental scientist, just had a whole conversation with my husband, the meteorologist, about how climate activists in particular, but also activists in general, fail because they too often center their argument about what “should” happen and ignore the reality of people’s lives and lifestyles. So, yeah. It’s a thing.

    5. iglwif*

      Absolutely.

      I fully, completely, understand the impulse to do this, and also it is not going to have the effect LW wants.

      It may not be possible to force LW’s manager to address this, but if anything is going to make that happen, it’s LW tilting their desk sideways and making the resulting mess their manager’s problem.

      That is to say: First, as Alison advises, drop the spreadsheet and focus your documentation and requests for advice on the specific ways in which your coworker’s failure to show up and work is affecting team productivity.

      If this kicks your manager into gear, Great! But if not, don’t keep giving up your vacation time to compensate for your coworker being a flake. Book your vacation days, do the kind of prep you would do if your coworker were holding up his end, turn on your OOO autoreply, and go enjoy your vacation. While you are OOO, remain unreachable and let whatever happens happen.

      As someone who is way too prone to taking responsibility for keeping other people’s flaming torches in the air, I fully understand how impossible this might feel. It’s really hard to contemplate just letting the torches fall and set things on fire. But your manager isn’t taking steps to fix this situation because you are making it possible for him to do nothing, and as impossible as it feels, you have to stop and let the torches fall.

    6. AlsoADHD*

      I also feel like leaning into “the rules” is way more likely to get ignored than bringing impacts. To be fair, a good manager is more likely swayed and bothered by, “I don’t feel like I can take PTO and I feel overworked ate to this because x and y.” They’re much less likely to be fussed by “Coworker comes in 1-2 times a week when they’re supposed to be in 3 and our job is not fully wfh.” The spreadsheet is only useful as it supports impacts; it’s not about what the job description says at this point so much as the impacts that should be addressed for LW.

    7. JustaTech*

      Yes!
      Thanks to the excellent advice here I managed to nip in the bud my desire to track the number of spontaneous WFH days my coworker Betty took. Yes, sometimes her WFH impacted me, but at least part of that was on me for not communicating with her “hey Betty, I want to do X thing in the lab tomorrow and need your help, are you going to be in? If not the next day is fine too.” (Part of this is also that I don’t like last minute schedule changes, which is 100% a me thing.)

      Sadly now I have a boss who is responding to pressure from above with “if we document everything they will have to be convinced of our value” and it is an exhausting amount of documenting the same work 3-4 different ways (accomplishments, schedule, hours) that I honestly don’t think is going to work.

  3. I dream of rain*

    Dude! Take your PTO! Let the chips fall where they may. You can’t care about your job more than your boss does.

    1. Bilateralrope*

      At this point, taking PTO and letting things fall apart is the only thing the LW has left that might convince the boss to care.

      No guarantees, but the LW has earned that time off.

      2. duinath*

        FR. They are not your chips, OP. Let them fall, they are not yours to catch and they are not yours to clean up.

        Stop caring about your co-worker. You do your job as if they would do theirs, and when your job is impacted by them *not* doing that, you loop in your manager as if they will manage, and then keep on.

        Don’t catch things for them, don’t clean up after them, just mind yours and pretend your workplace has it together.

        If anything will get things to change, it’s you not handling it, and either way this is not yours to worry over. Let it go, you’re not driving this car.

    2. Beth*

      This! Stop tracking your coworker’s hours and location. Stop complaining about him not coming in. Stop helping him or covering for him on his tasks.

      Just do the work your manager has assigned to you, take your PTO, and let your coworker fail. If he was supposed to cover for a task and didn’t do it while you were out, let your manager know. If he was supposed to do something that’s a prerequisite for your work, let your manager know. If a task is supposed to be handled by both of you, do what you can reasonably do in a work day without rushing, and let your manager know that the rest needs additional coverage. Otherwise, don’t worry about what he’s doing.

      Either there will be problems and your manager will deal with them, or there won’t and this will continue but won’t be your problem anymore.

  4. ShazamIT*

    1. Stop spreadsheet tracking your coworker. That looks extremely bad. You are not his boss. His attendance is not your job.

    2. Take your days off. If you want to WFH, take a WFH day even if it means stuff falls through. Take your vacations. Make it your bosses problem if the work flow is disrupted by that. The solution is never person A rolls over and works nonstop. Consider the ‘bus principle’, if you got hit by a bus today and were out the next 2 months in traction, they’d have to figure it out.

      1. Marz*

        My supervisor had a spreadsheet and I didn’t care! It was still kinda weird and obsessive to be tracking my time in. Like, I know what’s happening. You know what’s happening. Stop spending time on the useless tracking and do something, if you like.

    2. Elbe*

      Yes! The LW needs to stop making it easy for other people at their own expense.

      This issue seems tricky to me because it seems like the LW is doing significantly more work than the coworker. It makes sense that the manager wouldn’t care about attendance if all of the work is being done, but it’s unfair for the LW to have to take on a disproportionate amount of work and receive little to no downtime.

      Tracking the coworkers attendance is a bad look, but I do think that the LW can do other things to highlight the severity of the issue.

      1) It sounds like the there is work that can only be done in-office (hence having it in the title) and the LW is doing 100% of that most of the time. Any chance the LW could claim that they couldn’t get it all done? With a manager this hands-off, I have a hard time thinking that they would come down on the LW for a reduction in their efficiency.

      2) The LW should work from home two days a week, even if it’s not ideal. Working partially from home, even just for a few months, may reset expectations for this other coworker.

      3) Be honest with the coworker about how much this is bothering the LW. If they tend to respond to the apologies with “no problem” or “I understand” they should stop doing this ASAP. It’s not impolite to tell this coworker that their pattern of skipping in-office days is a real hardship for the LW and that they want to see improvement in the area rather than constant apologies. The LW shouldn’t feel bad about making this coworker feel a little be bad about what they’re doing! They are taking advantage! If they know enough to apologize, they know enough to stop doing it. It has been over a year already!

      1. goddessoftransitory*

        Yep. If somebody is still apologizing to you for the same issue a year later, it’s because they think that is just SOP to keep doing what they want to do–not show up at the office.

    3. The Starsong Princess*

      Your boss doesn’t care because it’s all getting done. As long as you keep doing it, the boss is happy. Document what you are supposed to do and what your colleague is supposed to do then do only your part. Throw him under the bus for his stuff.

    4. Working under my down comforter*

      Agreed. Do your job and what you have to do for yourself and your health.

  5. Dawn*

    This is just an option, but you could also start looking for new work. I’m sure your manager will be more motivated to do their job and manage this employee once you aren’t covering the slack.

    1. Caramel & Cheddar*

      I know “just get a new job” is often not helpful or actionable advice, especially if you otherwise like your job, but a situation like this is clearly not going to improve so you have two choices: accept it and move on, or find a new job and move on. In either case, you are moving on, and you get to decide which kind of moving on you want to do.

      1. ferrina*

        Exactly this. Your boss and coworker have shown that they have no intention of changing. So either accept that these are the defacto conditions of your job, or find a new job.
        I’m a fan of the low-key job search. Just because you are looking doesn’t need to leave- it just gives you a better sense of what your options are right now. And you can stop a job search at any time.

    2. A. Lab Rabbit*

      LW says “This is easily the best job I’ve had outside of this” so I can understand their reluctance to move on, but 1) all jobs will have their frustrations like this, and 2) there may be a better job out there. Who knows?

      1. Dawn*

        To be fair, I’ve had some absolutely terrible jobs that were still the best jobs I’d had up to that point.

        The flaws became much more apparent once I was out of them.

        1. Nah*

          At one point the cashier job where a man urinated on my register was legitimately the best job I’d had at that point in my life, because at least it didn’t permanently disable me (physically at least, I won’t guess on the resulting mental effects)…

      2. Annony*

        Yeah. The “outside of this” part is a big qualifier. This isn’t going to change. Given that, is it still the best job and worth staying and dealing with it? Or is it a big enough issue to leave?

      3. Jayne*

        Aside from that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?

        Humans are adaptable, so sometimes you only realize what was unbearable in the rear-view mirror. And I think that the fact that you kept a spreadsheet for so long does indicate that it is a problem big enough to consider leaving or at least dropping your end of the rope.

  6. Same Boat*

    This is one of the few times that I disagree, but only because I’m dealing with a similar attendance problem. I escalated it to my union because I believe it’s unfair enforcement of our telework agreement. When I did escalate it, though, they needed specific dates from me. It wasn’t enough for me to say “So-and-so hasn’t worked a full week in 6 months and is always out 1-2 extra days.”

    I WISH that I had had a spreadsheet I could send. Instead I had to cobble together my distinct memories and go through my work emails and texts to put together a timeline that I know has to be missing some dates.

    1. A. Lab Rabbit*

      It is different when a union is involved. Given the very high chance that LW is in the US, that means there’s a very high chance they don’t have a union, unfortunately.

    2. MassMatt*

      But still, shouldn’t the issue be whether the work is getting done or not? We really don’t have enough info to say, though the fact that coworker is not picking up things when LW is on PTO indicates maybe not.

      I am wondering whether this coworker is the master of jiu-jitsu of boss management–Boss is never around, has no idea whether coworker is there or not, and coworker convinces boss there’s just “too much work” for one person and hires LW to… do coworker’s work.

      IME people who are loudest about being overworked rarely are. I can think of two people I knew especially whose entire jobs seemed to consist of complaining about their workload when their weekly accomplishments would take at most a couple hours.

      1. bamcheeks*

        It’s also entirely possible that it doesn’t matter that Co-worker is only coming in 2 days a week instead of 3 because LW is generally choosing to be in 5 days a week. If im managing a function which needs 2 x 3 days in the office, and I’ve got one person choosing to come in 5 days and one choosing to come in 2 days and both are doing good work, it’s not immediately obvious to me that there’s a problem. If I have some flexibility over that three days, it’s not super clear to me that LW’s preference for having a co-worker there three days a week takes precedence over co-worker’s preference to work from home 3 days a week.

        1. Mad Scientist*

          “It’s not super clear to me that LW’s preference for having a co-worker there three days a week takes precedence over co-worker’s preference to work from home 3 days a week.”

          Very well said and I think this is important for LW to keep in mind. Your preference for in-office work is no more important than your coworker’s preference for WFH.

          1. HideInTheBushes*

            It’s not a preference though, the position is an on-site position – that automatically overrides the coworker’s preference to work from home, especially since LW very clearly states that the coworker has serious performance issues when they work remotely – the issue has nothing to do with LWs preference to work onsite more than the required time.

            1. bamcheeks*

              Where do they say “very serious performance issues” when they work remotely? It says they have on-site in their job title but they’re allowed to work from home two days a week. The only perfomance issue (as opposed to attendance issue) mentioned is not completing work whilst LW was ok PTO, and there’s not indication thag was linked to in-office work.

            2. AlsoADHD*

              It sounds like the position is hybrid with some work that maybe requires being onsite? That part was confusing to me because it’s not a fully onsite position and LW’s average has the other person essentially doing one extra WFH day a week (3 instead of 2). I’m sure that can cause issues in some cases, particularly since the coworker sounds unreliable at saying when they will be in? But I’m not quite sure how the LW is seeing it as them missing every day they’re out if they’re allowed to wfh 2 days a week and they’re doing 3 on average? I’m misunderstanding maybe, but it definitely isn’t written as a fully onsite job.

        2. fhqwhgads*

          It’s not entirely clear to me that this situation is “the coworker is supposed to be in office 3 days a week and WFH for 2, but is always WFH” and not “the coworker only works when they come in, and isn’t coming in enough, and isn’t working from home at all”.

          1. amoeba*

            Yeah, that’s what I was wondering as well! It sounds a bit like the latter, as otherwise I’d assume they could still work together productively/brainstorm/colleague could take care of things while LW is out remotely? At least that’s how it works here, I mean, it’s nice to have coworkers on site for lunch and water cooler chat and in person meetings and stuff, but the actual work still gets done either way.

          2. commensally*

            Yeah, LW said they were out 90 days over the course of a year – which means he was off at most 5% more than his acceptable 2 days a week. If some of those days were actually SL (which it sounds like they might have been) he may not even be, on average, over his 2 days a week allowed. LW’s letter is making it seem a lot more extensive than their numbers do.

            LW if the problem is a) you’re doing a disproportionate amount of work, b) he’s lying about when he’ll be in so you can’t plan around him, c) you can’t take leave because important work won’t be covered if the office is empty, then that’s what you need to take to your boss. The wfh time may be what’s annoying you most, but it’s a red herring. b) and c) might actually handle themselves if you stop making an issue of the WFH time and he becomes more willing to work with you instead of working around you. (i.e., if he can manage 5 days a week a few times a year, instead of having those be unplanned right after you’ve complained to boss about him, arrange it so that they’re around your leave time. If he stops feeling like you’re obsessing over whether he will be in or not, he might be more able to just say he won’t be in.)

          3. Also-ADHD*

            I was really confused if they were working on WFH days or not – yes.

            That’s a crucial point because not doing work and not coming into the office are essentially 2 different things (it sounds like this is a hybrid role – 2 days WFH allowed but coworker often takes 3 WFH days, which manager doesn’t seem to mind but LW does).

        3. fhqwhgads*

          Say you’ve got 2 people in a role that includes 40% task A, which can be done from home, and 60% task B, which can only be done physically on site.
          Employee X comes in 5x a week and does 100% of their job.
          Employee Y comes in 2x within 2 weeks, and not in at all when Employee X is OOO, causing task B to not get done at all during that time. They’re mediocre at best at task A.
          That’s what’s described in the letter. ” one person choosing to come in 5 days and one choosing to come in 2 days and both are doing good work” is not what’s described.

          1. bamcheeks*

            Employer Y comes in 4 times in two weeks, it says. So 40% in-office instead of 60% in-office. And the letter doesn’t mention specific tasks that have to be done on site, just that LW likes the company.

            It’s possible there are on-site tasks that have to be done, I’m not saying that’s defintiely not the case— but if there are, LW hasn’t actually said that!

        4. Katie Now*

          The letter says that the coworker barely makes it in four days out of every two weeks, so they are not coming in two days a week reliably at all. If the coworker was openly working two days in office instead of three, it sounds like that would work fine. OP could plan for that and get. The collaboration they need. Instead, it seems they are just not showing up either 1 or 2 out of the 3 days of every week that they are expected, leaving OP in the lurch.

    3. Elbe*

      If this issue is big enough that the LW is willing to go over the boss’s head (and that’s a huge step that seems logical only if the LW is otherwise going to quit), then tracking the dates could be appropriate. Sure, tracking the dates is an overstep, as it is is the manager’s job, but that’s kind of the point if you’re escalating over your boss’s head.

      It’s not necessarily the path I’d recommend, but if the LW is going to escalate, then having firm data would be helpful.

    4. not nice, don't care*

      Sometimes having a spreadsheet documenting someone’s gaslighty malfeasance is a sanity-saver, at least at first.

      1. fhqwhgads*

        Yeah. Some manager says “oh I’m sure it’s not really THAT frequent. It just feels that way because you’re annoyed about it.” And then a spreadsheet is born.

  7. K.K.*

    I have been in a similar situation and it really was hard. Because technically yes I could get all my tasks done solo. It was mind numbingly lonely to do them solo and they always came out “acceptable” quality at best. But it was doable. Whereas the days my coworker was in were really good. We worked so well together, we enjoyed each other’s company, and we got literally award-winning work done. I know how rare it is to gel with someone like that at work. And officially we were working like that together two or three times as much as we actually were.

    I guess I’m just saying there is space between “can’t possibly do the work without Coworker” and “this is OK”.

    1. menopausal ninja*

      I understand this entirely! I’m extroverted and work much better when I have people to bounce ideas off of in-person in real time. Part of our work unit stayed remote post-COVID. It made tons of business sense due to the type of work they do, and their main output gets done and done well. Since they went remote, the part of the job where they interface with me is noticeably lower quality but still totally acceptable. The biggest change is that my enjoyment of working with this part of our work unit was absolutely cratered by changing all of our interactions to electronic. We used to brainstorm projects and innovations together and now we just “do our jobs.”

      1. Mad Scientist*

        I just wish the extroverts could have their fun social office experience and the introverts could have their peace and quiet.

        1. allathian*

          I’m an introvert too, and I hear you. That said, I’ve found that development days are less exhausting at the office than on Teams. But lots of jobs require more daily collaboration than I’d be able to handle without getting completely exhausted by the end of the day, luckily my job isn’t one of those.

          Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy talking to people at the office on my lunch and coffee breaks, I’m very chatty in spite of being an introvert. But being an introvert is not the same as being shy or having social anxiety.

          I prefer WFH because I’m so easily distracted at the office, and being always “on” is very tiring for me.

          I’m one of two in-house translators. Our job requires minimal synchronous collaboration, and most of that is easiest to handle through IM anyway. There’s also some asynchronous collaboration when we proofread each other’s critical translations, but I could do more than 90% of my job without talking to anyone else. That said, I do enjoy being a part of a work community, before I got this job I worked as a freelancer, and I never even spoke to my main customer on the phone after the call during which they hired me (and I hated the marketing and admin work that’s necessary for running a business).

          1. Cannibal Queen*

            Squee – my dream job! I’ve dealt with a number of international organisations over the years and seen/heard/read their interpreters and translators in action. They are awe-inspiring!

        2. amoeba*

          I love how you frame collaboration on actual work things that results in better quality output as “fun social office experience”.

          1. Mad Scientist*

            Well, sure, it’s an oversimplification. The point is that this working style results in better quality output *for some people* but not for everyone. It’s a preference, not a universal truth, that being around other people while working results in better work. Even the commenter above acknowledged that their coworkers who work remotely still get their main area of work done well, but the main issue is that she doesn’t enjoy interacting with them as much as she used to. And the comment above that mentions enjoying coworkers’ company and feeling lonely when working independently. So yeah, quality of work is certainly part of this, but beyond that, some people simply prefer to feel more socially connected at work, and that’s ok! I know plenty of people who got most of their social interactions through work and really struggled with loneliness when more people started going remote, even if the quality of their work actually improved. It’s absolutely true that some people thrive in a more social environment, and that’s a valid preference, and it’s also true that some people don’t thrive as much in that environment but those preferences are often seen as less valid. Introverts are used to sacrificing their own preferences and productivity for the sake of the team.

            Just saying it would be nice if both preferences could be respected in a perfect world.

          2. Also-ADHD*

            Well, does it result in better quality output for all? I find remote collaboration generally has led to better quality output for my work (better documentation, routine, focus time, etc.) but I am introverted. Extroverts may see work quality dip where introverts see it rise, I guess?

            Also, both synchronous and asynchronous remote collaboration are often ignored in these conversations, but to me, both of those are better for my brain than in-person (I can rarely focus on collaborating in person as fully — I’m dealing with too many sensory and environmental issues). A lot of what extroverts are saying is that work “feels better” with someone there and they enjoy it more, so it didn’t seem that oversimplified.

            1. amoeba*

              Not for all, sure! But to the person who wrote the top comment, so I don’t get why the reply was in any way relevant here?

    2. cncx*

      Yup, this was the case in one of my jobs. When they worked from home I could handle it if it was a couple times a year thing but multiple times a week became an issue with imbalanced workload. I couldn’t do any thinking tasks or projects because I was the one in the office putting out the fires.

  8. Librarian of Things*

    A supervisor is likely to get frustrated by LW’s use of work time to track their colleague’s whereabouts, too, after the truancy message has already been delivered (repeatedly, in one-on-one meetings, for over a year). From the outside, we can’t see if there’s discipline happening, accommodations made, or just garden variety lack of management.

    LW, you don’t want to distract from the message of, “our work product is suffering; how can we accomplish Work Goal?” and “I’m going to be out for 8 days starting Tuesday; please ensure Y gets done.” Follow Alison’s advice and focus on your work and what is — and is not — getting done in a reasonable way. If nothing else, you’ll be less stressed than aggravating yourself with knowing whether your colleague has been out 78 or is it 81 days so far this year.

    1. Elle*

      I was this manager! I had a team where one member always criticized another’s work ethic and time to complete things. She tracked their work as well. What she didn’t know was that the other employee was getting out of an abusive relationship and wasn’t her normal, productive self. I asked the angry employee to back off and focus on themselves.

    2. Miss Chanandler Bong*

      This was my thought as well. Sure, maybe the job description is that the role is supposed to be 3 days in office…but we don’t know if the coworker has an issue that the company is accommodating that they are not sharing with OP. If it’s something medical going on, they may not be able to share with OP, and the coworker has chosen not to share either, which would be his right.

      I think maybe OP should reframe their thinking. Instead of “Fergus doesn’t come into the office, so work isn’t getting done” change it to “Okay, Fergus isn’t in the office for whatever reason, but the work still needs to get done, so how can we change our approach to make that happen?” And then approach it that way with the manager. Basically, instead of trying to manage Fergus, figure out how to more effectively work WITH Fergus.

      1. Elbe*

        “Okay, Fergus isn’t in the office for whatever reason, but the work still needs to get done, so how can we change our approach to make that happen?”

        If the manager is giving Fergus an accommodation, then this is really on the manager to figure out. It’s part of what giving an accommodation entails. Leaving it up to an employee (who has no information and who has no authority to enact change) is really negligent.

      2. Also-ADHD*

        I also wonder if it was meant to be 3 days in office for the new hire, because the original person in role was working 2 days in office (that would cover all days)? And then they intentionally hired OP because they expressed a preference for in-office and figured that was helpful to balance the worker who preferred to WFH? I have seen that happen, so just came to me with the 2/3 thing… But it’s probably a longshot. Even so, LW seems to be judging co-worker as though they should be in 5 days/week and predominantly or fully onsite (as though being in 4x every 2 weeks is substantially lower, when it’s pretty close) while telling us that the role is hybrid.

    3. Elbe*

      I agree here, but I also think that the boss is handling this very poorly even if there are things going on behind the scenes.

      It sounds like this job requires in-office coverage and someone has to be present. If the manager is giving an accommodation or extra grace to one employee, the onus is on them to notify the other employee that being in-office full time is now part of their job requirement. The disproportionate workload should be addressed and compensated. There should be other plans in place for PTO and overflow work.

      Regardless of the reasons why, it is awful to let the LW deal with this situation for over a year without addressing it. Even if they can’t give the LW every detail, they should still say something to the person that this situation is affecting the most.

      1. Librarian of Things*

        I agree, which is why I didn’t rule out just bad management. Heck, even if there’s discipline and/or accommodations going on behind the scenes, the manager should have said they’re working on the issue and dug deeper into the impact on LW so that LW could work effectively, regardless of what’s going on with the coworker.

    4. Allonge*

      So – OP should stop tracking, but how long does it take to open a speardsheet and put ‘Mark (not) in today’ and save the file? A minute?

      1. Joron Twiner*

        Yes, and OP should stop spending minutes of their time, as well as kilojoules of emotional energy, tracking this. It’s not their job!

        1. Librarian of Things*

          Exactly! The spreadsheet may take only a minute, but the fuming over that minute carries over into the rest of the morning’s work, probably follows LW home from work, and is clearly messing with their vacation, too.

          The manager knows what the coworker is doing and is either working on it or not and further harping is only going to make LW explode, not change one minute of the coworker’s attendance record. Better to change tack and focus the manager on how to get the work done. It will be better for both productivity and sanity.

  9. YesPhoebeWould*

    One option would be to start printing (physical paper) highly important things that he will get in trouble if he does not complete and leaving them on his chair or deck. No slacks or. emails about them. If these are things that you can be the first one to explain to your superiors (“Yep, I absolutely informed him that this had to be done by January 5, here is the communication I gave him.”). If possible, schedule meetings with him (in person) to discuss critical things, then burn him with your boss’s boss when he doesn’t show up to get the information.

    You have policy on your side when he inevitably complains that he didn’t get an email or slack.

    Stop covering for him in any way. Print the document, put it on his desk, take a picture to prove you did it, and see where that goes.

    1. Strive to Excel*

      Nope, no, bad idea, no.

      Depending on what job you have, leaving critical things lying around on a coworker’s desk could be a breach of security. And paper moves. Cleaners come in and move thing. A gust from the air vent blows it off. Someone mistakes it for a different paper and tosses it. If there’s something that OP is doing by email/slack that is causing more work than the in-person option, it would be reasonable to not do that, email and say “I’ve set up X for you in the office” and call it a day. But in-person is not the same as “does not use digital communication”.

      This will be viewed as petty at best and disruptive at worst.

      1. YesPhoebeWould*

        Malicious compliance ALWAYS looks “petty”. Yet it works surprisingly often. If he is supposed to be in the office tomorrow, and doesn’t come in and then somebody tosses the paper? So much the better.

        The entire POINT is to make things inconvenient and difficult while still complying with the letter of the law. the OP has tried several other things and they have not worked. The coworker is the one out of compliance.

        And if this is a problem? The coworker can EASILY and completely solve the problem, simply by doing what he is supposed to do, just as the boss can by simply enforcing the rules, and penalizing the coworker if he continues to disobey them.

        1. I.T. Phone Home*

          “Malicious compliance” is when you follow a rule or instruction given by your boss despite knowing that it will actually backfire or otherwise not have the intended result.

          What you’re suggesting is that the LW take it upon themselves to invent a new process for divvying up and assigning work and not inform anyone until things go wrong. It’s very different and it’s likely to go spectacularly wrong.

        2. Strive to Excel*

          This isn’t malicious compliance since it’s not actually complying with anything. If company policy is “Llama papers must be reviewed in hardcopy” and the LW has been digitizing them for coworker, sure. But stopping use of standard electronic channels? No. This is creating a problem that doesn’t exist otherwise.

      2. A. Lab Rabbit*

        I agree. Not using the electronic channels the company has set up and I would assume that employees are expected to use would just make LW look like a Luddite or worse.

        This is not malicious compliance, since you aren’t actually complying. It’s going to make LW look very, very bad.

      3. Also-ADHD*

        In many industries and roles, this would also be a confidentiality/security no-no. Plus, it sounds like this is a hybrid role, so it would just be absurd to do.

    2. Caramel & Cheddar*

      This is just a waste of paper. This guy is equally capable of pretending to have not received a physical piece of paper as he is about not receiving emails, if that’s indeed something he’s pretending as part of not getting work done. This guy sucks, but if I was him I’d wonder why you were wasting your own time doing this instead of doing literally anything else.

    4. Seashell*

      Email gives proof that Fergus was informed of whatever and exactly when. LW can request an acknowledgment of receipt from Fergus if it’s needed and follow up accordingly if s/he hears nothing, possibly including with a cc to the boss.

      1. I'm an NP now*

        this is what I was thinking. An email every so often (depending on what the workflow looks like – daily in the morning? every Monday?) with something along the lines of “okay Fergus I understand you’ll be in the office T/W/F this week, here’s how I’m thinking we can set up our work flow, let me know if you see anything you’d like to change?” and cc the boss. Then, when things do change because he calls out sick / flakes entirely you can respond to the email with the new plan, and cc the boss. After a while Fergus and boss will probably get tired of the long thread because of Fergus’ inconsistency.

  10. Llellayena*

    You say when he’s in you work well together. Is that just when he’s in office or when he’s working from home (and not just “out” at one of the many family funerals)? Is it the general “not working” that’s the issue or the not working IN THE OFFICE? If it’s general not working, then Alison’s approach makes sense. Your manager needs to know how your coworker’s absence is affecting your ability to complete your work. If it’s “not working in the office but still available as work from home” that seems like more of an issue you should keep your nose out of. However, the effect on your ability to take PTO and the missed work that he agreed to handle while you’re out does need to be addressed, no matter whether it’s an in office issue or not. Take your PTO, copy your manager on the request for him to pick up work while you’re out, then follow up after you get back (still with the manager copied) if it’s not done. Then your manager has the whole trail. Make it their problem.

    1. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

      Right, I was wondering about this.
      Is this a job that can’t be done from home, at all? If so, what is he doing to fill his time? What metrics do you have that prove that you made 120 widgets in November and he made 20?

      1. Myrin*

        OP says that the job requires in-office attendance “at least three days a week” so I’d assume there are parts that can be done from home. What’s unclear is whether the stuff he ignored while OP was out was something that could only be done from the office and as such he ignored it because he hadn’t come in, or whether he could’ve just as well done it from home and simply didn’t.

        1. Dawn*

          Well, that’s the requirement on paper. We don’t really know if he actually needs to be in. Although I have to admit that the alleged constant apologies certainly make him look like he’s not holding up his end.

          1. Oh FFS*

            Gotta love the pretzels you WFH stans put yourselves into to find any excuse to say “But maayyyybeee he doesn’t aaaccctuallyyy neeeeed to be iiiinnnn….” Tiresome.

      1. Elbe*

        My understanding is that there is a portion of the work that must be done in-office. When he’s not in-office, the LW is doing 100% of that work and he’s only doing his portion of what can be done at home. It sounds like the LW is doing significantly more work overall, which is why this is a problem.

    3. HonorBox*

      It seems like they are expected to be in the office at least 3x/week. Seems pretty straightforward. My question is what exactly they’re covering when in-office. And what additional work LW has to to because they’re in-office more. And what would happen if LW just decided (though I know they prefer in-office) to only come in 3x/week.

    4. umami*

      I was wondering about this. It’s not clear that the coworker isn’t working at all on days they are not in the office, just that they have a reason to WFH. on days they were going to be in the office. And OP wouldn’t even know the extent if they weren’t in the office 5 days instead of the required 3. So if boss is happy with coworker’s output and isn’t requiring them to do 3 days onsite, then what is there to worry about? I know sometimes we ‘feel’ like we have to pick up the slack of others, but it doesn’t sound at all like OP is being asked to do so.

      1. 10-2 split*

        I’m really curious what kind of work these two do that can be done successfully if you work in an office 3x a week and from home 2x a week, but cannot be done successfully in a 2/3 split (average of 4 in-office days over two weeks). OP doesn’t mention any need for coordinating the days that would indicate a coverage-based job, and in fact called out that they prefer working in person with the colleague when they do show up.

        1. Allonge*

          Obviously I don’t have the specifics, but the ‘X is here so I ask them’ is a thing. OP is there, so by definition they get more tasks that require them to be in the office or are coming from people who prefer to talk to people in person or tasks that come just meeting randomly and someone says ‘oh, now that I see you’.

          If coworker were around at least the minimum mandatory days, they would get a fairer share of these tasks, but they are not.

        2. fhqwhgads*

          My instinct is certain tasks that involve physical equipment that is in the office and cannot be transported. OP didn’t say, but if they have 3 days worth of “that machine” work per week on avg, that’d explain the 3d-2d split works and why less would not.

    5. MPM*

      The OP focuses A LOT on the job description but not at all on how much of the job can’t actually be done remotely, or how much exactly isn’t being done while coworker is not physically there. It reads to me like OP is someone who is VERY ATTACHED to rules just for the sake of being a rule follower. There was only one mention of something being missed while he was out, and it’s unclear how big of an oversight that actually was, how often it happens, or the effect on the business. If coworker is mostly doing his job well, the manager may be using his discretion to look the other way on the in-office requirement. Lots of companies actually work this way and lots of people thrive in professional environments where their work product matters more than their in-office attendance! This is especially common if the role is underpaid, hard to fill, to reward seniority, etc. If flexibility was being allowed unfairly, that would be one thing, but that’s not the case from the OP; they seem to want strict adherence to rules simply because they exist and OP’s manager may be telling OP without telling them that this just isn’t an issue the company cares about. So stop worrying about whether he’s following the rules or not, and focus on the actual work. I’d something’s not being done or if you’re not able to take time off, definitely address that, but beyond that, OP needs to stop being the creepy coworker with a spreadsheet.

        1. Also-ADHD*

          Well, we don’t know that LW has to go any more than he does theoretically? Sorting that out would be useful to figuring out what to do too though!

      2. fhqwhgads*

        I didn’t read it as being attached to the rules. I read it as supplying that information to head off the inevitable comments “are you sure it’s clear to him this is the requirement?” that would’ve happened otherwise.

  11. Speak*

    I was hoping for the advice of take you PTO & let the things fail. My advice is to make sure you document that you are taking your PTO and your coworker needs to complete XYZ before you get back. Send a detailed email to your coworker & supervisor of dates you will be out on PTO & what exactly needs to be done in that time. When you get back to work, don’t do XYZ if they aren’t done. Then when someone complains that XYZ didn’t get done, you have your documentation covered that it was now coworker’s responsibility while you were out.

    1. learnedthehardway*

      Agreeing with this. This is the way to handle this situation – take your PTO, make sure that everything that needs to be done while you’re out is documented, f/up with your manager if the stuff wasn’t done while you were on PTO.

    3. umami*

      I just re-read the letter, and the boss has already offered to have all 3 of them meet. so .. I would do this? Not to talk about the spreadsheet (lol) but to discuss work expectations. If OP is concerned about Cecil’s schedule but learns that boss doesn’t care and is happy with everyone’s work output, and that she should take her PTO and not feel like everything pending has to be done in her absence, maybe that will give her peace of mind.

  12. Ann O'Nemity*

    Is the coworker still getting their work done? Is the LW getting stuck with extra work? Does the manager even know who is doing what?

    It may be more persuasive to focus on the impact instead of time tracking.

    1. Generic Name*

      I think this is key. I had a coworker who I noticed always arrived later than me, and always left earlier than me. I work a normal 8 hour day, so I assumed he must have been logging in at home later in the afternoon/evening. He always said something about picking up kids or the train schedule, so I didn’t think much about it. I was, however, quite taken aback when he told me he really never took PTO because he could just work remotely, and then described how he’d go to Florida for vacation or to another state to visit family over holidays and would “monitor his emails and be responsive” on his work phone and count that as working a full 8 hour day. Still, I never said anything because it wasn’t directly impacting his work. Management eventually realized that he was abusing remote work and started monitoring his output closely, and he eventually left for a fully remote job managing a bunch of people.

      It sounds like you’ve been doing most of the work for 2 people, and everything is running ok, so why should management step in? As others have said, take your PTO, let your manager know the status of where you leave things, and if zero progress is made while you are out, maybe management will decide to act. Or not, and you’ll have information about your job to help you decide to stay or move on.

      1. menopausal ninja*

        I had a coworker like this – he would travel (for fun) and not use PTO because he was “available by phone”. He also, only once in many, many, many years of working together (we were parallel colleagues in different work units who needed to collaborate) actually provided me with a usable, identifiable work product. I discussed his outright wage theft with his supervisor (because it was easier to prove than the fact that he was making his direct report do all of his work for him), and it went exactly nowhere. He’s finally retired and I get SO MUCH MORE DONE even though they never backfilled his position.

  13. Sihaya*

    The company needs to notice that things fall behind when you take your PTO. And don’t use overtime to catch up when you get back (unless it’s paid – then absolutely collect that fat check for doing your coworker’s job). Now here’s where things get tricky . The company may respond by working on things, or your boss may start to refuse you PTO because you’re just ‘too essential’. If they do the latter, then the job really is a no-win scenario, and I’m sorry.

  14. HonorBox*

    First, I’d love to see the spreadsheet. Maybe discontinue its use, but I do love a good spreadsheet.

    There may be a little nuance to this, because I don’t know exactly what your jobs entail, but in the conversation with your boss, highlight that the expectation is in the office three days a week. That’s clearly for a reason. Because you’ve been in the office every day, nothing has fallen to the wayside because that in-office coverage is there. So maybe just suggest that you might change your approach and only work in the office the required number of days. What will the impact to the business be? Highlight that.

    1. Strive to Excel*

      It sounds like OP prefers to be in office for personal productivity reasons whether or not Fergus is in.

      1. bleh*

        They can go to a coffee shop two days a week to avoid the home issues and still not be in the office. Or a local library. Just make it a problem for the boss instead of themselves.

        1. amoeba*

          I mean, I have an ergonomic chair, a second screen, a canteen, a standing desk… at work. No way I’m going to work from a café instead just to make a point.

      2. HonorBox*

        Agreed. But they don’t HAVE to is my point. If the OP is covering – intentionally or not – for Cecil because they’re present even when he’s not, they should stop covering. Again, not sure what the jobs are and what the specific need for in-office work is, but if OP is in Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and works at home, a coffee shop, library (as bleh points out) and then no one is around Thursday and Friday, what impact does that have on the business? Or at the very least, what does that look like for the business when neither Cecil or OP are there?

    2. Antilles*

      Highlight that the expectation is in the office three days a week. That’s clearly for a reason.
      Are we sure there’s a reason? I certainly wouldn’t assume that just because Corporate wrote it down that there’s a good reason (or even any reason at all).
      There’s an enormous chasm between the ‘expectation’ being backed by actual work requirements for this particular role, versus simply being imposed from on high because the job description/policy written by Corporate says so.
      If it’s the former, then OP should focus on the work needs that are going unmet/all falling on OP because of his absence.
      But if it’s the latter, well, OP can still bring it up, but that would go a long way to explaining why the boss is fairly laid-back about it. Maybe there’s an informal agreement that falls under “managerial judgment”, maybe he threatened to leave if he didn’t get plenty of flexibility, maybe there’s a legitimate documented health issue that he doesn’t want to explain to OP, or maybe the Boss flat out doesn’t care where the work gets done as long as it gets done.

      1. Riley*

        Our job description is very specific that in office attendance is absolutely required of us at least three days a week. Our job title has the word “on-site” in it.

        Yes, there’s a reason. Let’s not nitpick the LW’s own description.

        1. Alice*

          I mean — my job went from at least 2 days to at least 3 days on site in November. I asked my boss what I should be doing on site that I hadn’t been doing on site already, and she told me: “you don’t need to change your activities; just do them from your cubicle. We are changing this so that our policies match another unit.”
          The 3-day requirement is in the job postings for the two people who resigned immediately afterwards (out of eight), but I wouldn’t say that there’s a good reason for it.

        2. hellohello*

          No one’s nitpicking about whether the job says it requires 3 days in office. They’re questioning if the major issue here is that the coworker isn’t accomplishing work from home or *can’t* accomplish work from home, due to the nature of the job. If the issue is the former, then it would really behoove the LW to stop focusing on where the coworker physically works from, and start focusing on how work isn’t getting accomplished.

        3. Antilles*

          Does the Boss actually care about that written description and job title though?
          OP can be right about their description, doesn’t mean the Boss has to follow it. I’ve worked plenty of jobs where the written job title and description handed down by corporate aren’t remotely in line with the day-to-day realities of the job. And it’s quite common there to be a whole broad category of “managerial judgment” where there’s more unofficial flexibility (either intentionally or due to apathy) regardless of what the written documents might say.

        4. Also-ADHD*

          This sounds like the “rules” are this, but not that there’s a reason… (There might be, but that’s not how I read that sentence at all. I read it like LW is very caught up on the “right” way to do the job on paper. But JDs are all over the place messed up all the time, that could be language in every job, etc.) Nothing wrong with wanting rules to be followed, but a rule is different from a reason.

      2. HonorBox*

        We’re told to take LWs at their word. Whether it is a reason or a “reason” doesn’t matter. Clearly it is written down. And I’m just suggesting that LW could very easily work elsewhere and make things more challenging for their manager because Cecil isn’t following the policy.

        I have a very hard time believing that there’s a valid and documented reason because if there was a good reason, Cecil would not be as apologetic as he is when he comes back to the office. And he’s not doing other work – enough so that the LW is anxious about using their PTO because Cecil let stuff drop the last time.

        1. Mad Scientist*

          Disagree, I think it absolutely matters. Just because it’s mentioned in the job description or job title does not mean there are any tasks that actually must be done in person and can’t be done from home. We see this all the time – companies (and now the government) requiring people to work in person even though their jobs can easily be done remotely. I am very skeptical that the LW would make things more challenging for anyone by working remotely more often. Her manager doesn’t work onsite and probably wouldn’t even notice or care. If they’re allowed to work remotely 2x per week then I doubt they need someone in the office every day for actual coverage reasons. It’s much more likely a “butts in seats” policy that the manager might not care about enough to enforce. My previous position was similar. Officially, we were supposed to be in person 3x per week, but my manager did not enforce it (nor did he follow the policy himself) and openly told me he didn’t care whether I worked in the office or from home, so I never went in unless I had a specific reason to be there. I suspect that might be the case here since the LW has brought it up to their manager multiple times and nothing has changed. I would not be surprised if the goal of the meeting between the three of them would be to get the LW to back off and stop monitoring her coworkers’ time rather than trying to force the coworker to come in more often.

          1. 10-2 split*

            I guess the LW doesn’t have to prove to us commentariat that the 3 day mandate is a true requirement of the job. However, the distinction is still germane. LW needs to break out of the mindset of “Cecil isn’t following the rules!” Instead, they need focus on the business impact of Cecil’s absence. To do that requires thinking about what the business case is behind the 3 day mandate. Only then can LW then turn that into an argument about what business needs aren’t being met currently by Cecil’s unpresenceness.

            1. Mad Scientist*

              Yes, my point exactly. The distinction isn’t for our sake as commenters, but it should help LW frame the issue (or lack thereof) both for herself and for any complaints to her boss. If it’s a job that can entirely be done from home and LW is only annoyed because she would prefer to have company, and there’s no business need she can point to, then it’s going to be an uphill battle that likely isn’t worth the fight.

      3. RC*

        Are we sure there’s a reason? I certainly wouldn’t assume that just because Corporate wrote it down that there’s a good reason (or even any reason at all).

        *nods in ‘US federal government this past week’* … regardless, if Boss doesn’t care enough to enforce it, it’s not LW’s job. I’d focus on the impacts to their own work.

      4. Also-ADHD*

        Especially with it being 3 day in office expectation, the person in an average of 2 days in office, and the manager not really caring, I’d halfway guess 3 days in office was just what the company listed somewhat arbitrarily. “3 days” seems to be the common arbitrary hybrid, and loads of managers would be fine with 2 days etc. in those cases IF it wasn’t heavily enforced.

    3. hypoglycemic rage (she/her)*

      right?! like of course this is not a good use of time or spreadsheets, but…. i love a good spreadsheet and would also like to see it.

    4. bamcheeks*

      That’s clearly for a reason

      Is it, though? My last job had an official “3 days a week” mandate. My manager told us that this was because his peer manager likes to see everyone in the office and since her team was bigger, she shouted louder and their skip-level boss took the oath of least resistance, that was the written policy. But his position was that he didn’t need to see us to know we were working and it was just fine if we averaged 2 days. If the main reason they are supposed to be in three days is because It Is Written, it may be that their shared manager just does not care that much.

      1. Hermione Danger*

        Can I just say that even though I’m sure it’s a typo, I love the idea that weak leaders take an “oath of least resistance.”

  15. Dust Bunny*

    Start using your PTO. Make it an inconvenience to your/your coworker’s manager to find coverage when you’re out of the office and your coworker no-shows.

    And start looking for another job, because you’re always going to be carrying most of the load here.

  16. Someone Else's Boss*

    As a manager, absolutely make this your boss’s problem instead of yours. Do not cover for him just because you’ve been doing it for years. Take your time off. When things aren’t done, as Allison suggests, tell your boss you can’t do X and Y, because you have to clean up the mess left for you by Coworker.

    When I took on my current role, my first task was to hire someone for a particular team because one member of the team had not taken a vacation in 2 years due to lack of coverage. A year later, she was laid off by the same people she had skipped vacations in order to support. Take your time off.

    1. jez chickena*

      I was this person. But it was three years. Then— I had a minor stroke and was out for two weeks. I was fired the day I returned to the office. It took three people to fill my role.

      1. Cookie Monster*

        Noooo. They FIRED you? That is so heartless. Hopefully you’ve found a better job since then.

    2. SansaStark*

      I was thinking the same thing as a manager. I was in a similar situation but because the work was getting done, (by 1 person instead of 2), my manager and I had an uphill battle to fight with HR. I had to instruct my other employee to make sure they were only doing their assignment each day and letting the other assignments fail. It was the only way I could show that the work wasn’t being done so I could get support with removing the employee. It was a frustrating situation for everyone, but I really needed to “see” the fail before I could build a case to remove them.

      1. not nice, don't care*

        This is me. I work alone and my work output is seen/used solely by people outside my department. Of course badmin assumed I was just fking off all day and could take on a chunk of new work.

        What got them off my back?
        Spreadsheets (with time/motion numbers for all my tasks) and a manager who didn’t need to know how to do my job to know I was actually doing my job.

  17. Parenthesis Guy*

    I feel like there’s a lot of information that we’re missing.

    Does co-worker work from home?
    Is it possible for worker and co-worker to meet when co-worker is working from home? Why is in-person so important?
    Can worker do something to feel comfortable with working from home? I understand home is filled with distractions. Can’t help thinking you’ll be happier if you work from the office two days a week.
    Are both worker and co-worker doing an equal amount of work?

    1. amoeba*

      “Can worker do something to feel comfortable with working from home? I understand home is filled with distractions. Can’t help thinking you’ll be happier if you work from the office two days a week.”

      I really, really don’t get why you jump to that – there are indeed people who genuinely prefer working in the office (I’m one of them, and so are most of my colleagues! Maybe we just have a very nice office, ha.) Just assuming that WFH is always better for everybody and whoever says the opposite just hasn’t seen the light yet is weird and condescending.

  18. CatDude*

    Frankly, I’d rather have “Cecil” as a co-worker than LW. Making a spreadsheet of a co-worker’s days in the office when you’re not their manager is unhinged.

    Take your PTO, absolutely, but it’s not your place to be tracking your co-worker. If people find out you are doing this, you will quickly find that a lot of your co-workers are going to (rightly) treat you with suspicion and distrust.

    1. Somehow I Manage*

      I’m sorry, but I have to disagree. You’d rather have someone who is very obviously not following requirements of their job (being in the office 3x/week) and not doing their work (letting stuff go undone when LW had PTO) than someone who is keeping tabs on office attendance?

      I agree that it isn’t a great look and needs to stop. But to say Cecil is a better coworker than the LW is wildly out of touch.

        1. Goldenrod*

          “I’d rather have a slacker as a co-worker than a narc”

          As someone who has experienced both – me too!

          1. HideInTheBushes*

            Personally, I would way rather work with a narc than a slacker.
            I’ve worked almost exclusively at small companies and people can say “let the slacker fail” as much as they want but in a small office the work is often much less silo’d and if a job doesn’t get done everyone pays the price. IME the slacker creates a much more toxic environment than the person who is a stickler for the rules but gets their job done well.

        2. Samwise*

          Right. What else are they monitoring, is the question that sort of behavior raises? Those are not nice people to work with. You have to watch yourself every minute, which is exhausting.

          Whereas with a slacker you can take action: take your pto, loop in your boss, refuse to kill yourself to cover for the slacker. And start seeing what other jobs are out there.

          1. CatDude*

            Exactly. I’ve dealt with both myself and for slackers, you just have to stop covering for them and it stops being your problem. But there’s no such solution for a narc. They create a constantly toxic work environment.

        3. Ann O'Nemity*

          This reminds me of the discussion post about a coworker going through someone’s trash to narc on them. There was quite a split between the commentariat on what was worse – the original offense or the narcing.

        4. not nice, don't care*

          Love how many shady folks are on team slacker. May you be monitored by narcs for the rest of your working lives.

          1. Mad Scientist*

            Lol, found the narc!

            And your impulse to call people shady because they have a different preference than you is precisely the sort of attitude we’re talking about when we say we don’t want to work with narcs.

            In my experience, the people who spend this much energy worrying about what other people are doing when it has no impact on their work are never the top performers. The top performers don’t care about looking busy (because they actually are busy) and that can seem like they’re slacking to other people who don’t have the full picture. I don’t need to make other people look worse to make myself look better. My work speaks for itself.

            1. Antilles*

              In my experience, the people who spend this much energy worrying about what other people are doing when it has no impact on their work are never the top performers.
              They also, in my experience, are always focus on the wrong things.
              They’ll pay attention to attendance, not productivity or work quality. They’ll complain about the person who takes a long lunch, ignoring that he also shows up super early in the morning. They’ll focus on whether you leave an hour early on Fridays, rather than whether your work is completed when you do.

        5. Oyo Poyo*

          I’ve been on both sides, and being a narc is stressful and doesn’t fix anything. Not only is it good not to work with a spreadsheet guy, it’s even better learning not to be spreadsheet guy. It’s like drinking poison and expecting someone else to get sick.

        6. Lizard the Second*

          I guess you’ve never had to pick up workload from slackers.

          And “narc”, come on.

      2. Dust Bunny*

        Since I’m not a slacker there’s nothing for my coworkers to narc on me. I have, however, been blamed far too often for not picking up slack for, well, slackers. My current workplace manages people when they don’t do their jobs, but previous jobs have just blamed and punished those of us who did show up.

        1. Enai*

          Well, those who do show up can be yelled at immediately when the boss is frustrated, unlike those that don’t. Conclusion: it’s best to stay away from work, since boss doesn’t bother tracking you down.

      3. umami*

        I do wonder at that comment about work not getting done when OP is out troubles me. Because it isn’t her job, it seems, to assign work. So it’s not clear that her saying, ‘Cecil, make sure X and Y get done while I’m out’ is something she even has standing to do. She might like to see everything moving forward at her pace, but if the boss doesn’t, then that’s an OP problem, not a Cecil problem.

        1. Mad Scientist*

          I was wondering about that too! It’s totally possible that her coworker already has a full workload of tasks that LW isn’t involved in, and LW may not have the authority or seniority to assign her workload to someone else, even if that means some things simply don’t get done while she’s out. Sometimes that’s ok!

    3. Statler von Waldorf*

      If you honestly think this is unhinged, you should click on the “Wait, what?” category on the right side of the page to see the really unhinged stuff. Cecil isn’t even demanding the LW donates their kidney or cooks food for 20 as part of their job interview, this is not even close to unhinged by the standards of this website.

      I also strongly disagree with your predictions about how the LW’s co-workers would react to this. In my experience, hard working employees don’t care about this kind of thing at all, because they know they’re doing the work and they don’t care who knows it. It’s usually the lazy ones who get all worked up over it, because they don’t want to get caught being lazy.

      1. CatDude*

        “If you have nothing to hide, there’s nothing to worry about” has never been a valid excuse. Even hard workers don’t like being constantly surveilled, especially by someone who has no standing to do so.

        1. Saturday*

          +1. Really dislike the suggestion that not wanting to be surveilled means you’re up to something.

      2. Joron Twiner*

        Hard workers often care when a coworker starts tracking their work hours and judging them by metrics their boss doesn’t care about. We’ve had letters about this before! It’s not OP’s job to manage Cecil’s attendance and performance, they don’t have the full picture.

    4. Elbe*

      The tracking sheet isn’t a good look, but it’s not unhinged. It makes sense in the context of 1) this is creating actual, practical issues for the LW 2) to the point where they are considering escalating it over their boss’s head.

      To me, it sounds less like the LW being a narc and much more like a reasonable person was driven to extreme lengths after suffering for over a year with a disproportionate work load and an ineffective manager.

      1. amoeba*

        Yeah, this. I can absolutely understand wanting some actual hard facts for a discussion with my manager who just keeps ignoring the issue. Otherwise I’m sure it’d just be “oh it’s not that bad!”.

        1. JustaTech*

          Yes! The LW doesn’t sound like someone who *wants* to be keeping a spreadsheet, the LW sounds like someone who is keeping a spreadsheet because they don’t know how else to address the issue of Cecil not coming in when they’re supposed to, and separately, Cecil not doing specific work.

          And when the spreadsheet didn’t accomplish what the LW wanted, the LW asked for help! That doesn’t sound like a narc, that sounds like a very frustrated person.

  19. Justin*

    This reminds me of how, in 8th grade, a kid in my class would take up lots of time arguing with the teacher – he probably was neurodivergent, but so am I, so I wasn’t looking down on that, and he eventually became a racist cop, so… – and, frustrated, I yelled out one day, AND HE BREAKS THE FIVE MINUTE MARK (because I was writing it down).

    I got sent to the office just like he did.

    Take your PTO.

  20. Goldenrod*

    I can’t quite tell from your letter if the issue your co-worker not doing work, or just not coming into the office. There’s a big difference!

    In my office, we have a 3-day in-office policy which, for the most part, is widely ignored…some people hardly ever come in, most come in one day a week. I come in daily but that’s because I live nearby and my husband works from home in our small apartment.

    However, everyone here totally pulls their weight and gets their job done – so who cares? I really couldn’t care less who comes in or not. Everyone does their work, so it’s fine.

    If your co-worker is pulling their weight but just doing it at home, honestly, I think you should just drop it.

    1. Myrin*

      It sounds like the “3 days in office” requirement doesn’t just exist for the heck of it but for actual business reasons.
      I’m getting that mostly from the work getting completely ignored while she’s out (and also from the fact that she says she’s being taken advantage of) but also from this part: “I was hired because it was too much work for him by himself, and I’m in the office by myself all the time.” That sounds like the work that was too much for coworker to do by himself was in-office work which has now simply shifted to OP instead of being divided up between the two of them.

      1. I went to school with only 1 Jennifer*

        There’s also this:
        >> Our job title has the word “on-site” in it.
        and this:
        >> He will sometimes inform me he isn’t coming in, but he just
        >> as often won’t and just doesn’t show up. He will often say
        >> he’ll be in later, only to change his mind and just not come
        >> in at all.

    2. Cobal*

      I wondered this two. If coworker is coming in four times in two weeks, that means only one less day than they should – and it’s worth noting LW said coworker was not in the office 90 days, or 1/3 of the days, but that means they were in the office on average 3.3 days per week.

      LW is clearly exasperated, but the evidence they provided doesn’t make me exasperated. It may be a bit of a B eating crackers situation. LW, my strong advice is either determine how this is impacting work and bring that to your manager, or let it drop

  21. A Simple Narwhal*

    I definitely agree with Alison to focus on the impact this is having on you and your work. I totally understand that it is crazy annoying to follow the rules and see someone else not following the rules and suffering (apparently) no consequences of it. I get it! It sucks.

    But at a certain point it’s going to be a bad look for you. It’s one thing if you hated working in the office and you see someone primarily working from home getting away with it, it would make some sense to say “hey this person is getting a benefit that I want to use too”. But when your main sticking point repeatedly seems to be “they’re breaking the rules, they’re not supposed to do that, rules are rules”, it’s not helping your argument or inspiring your boss to take action. Again, you are not wrong to be upset! But complaining repeatedly about something that doesn’t actually affect you, plus spending all this time closely monitoring their behavior, is not going to win you any favors.

    However! Your coworker is dropping balls, not completing work, and preventing you from taking PTO – those are solid grievances affecting your ability to do your job, those absolutely should be reported and addressed. Focus on those! Those are the real issues.

  22. Stuart Foote*

    I’m not clear if the co-worker is working from home on the days he doesn’t go in to the office, or just not working. I’d assume working from home, except for the fact that he uses funerals as an excuse and the fact that it appears they only appear to work well together when the co-worker is in and and LW is afraid to take PTO since the co-worker doesn’t follow up on stuff (which is obviously something that is a risk even with employees who are in the office every day, but in this case it appears linked to the absences).

    Assuming (as Alison does) that the co-worker is in fact working at home, this will probably be an uphill battle for the LW since it’s pretty clear the boss doesn’t care if the co-worker works from home. If I managed people I wouldn’t and I’d be a little annoying if a direct report kept bringing it up. Working from home 90 days in a year isn’t exactly outrageous. (Which makes me think maybe the co-worker isn’t actually working when he’s at home?)

  23. Stuart Foote*

    I’m a little confused by the math here. Assuming the co-worker works 235 days a year, and is supposed to be in the office 3 times a week, that is 141 times he’s required to be in the office.

    According to the letter, he was at home 90 days, so he showed up in the office 145 times. Based on these numbers it appears the co-worker did nothing wrong per the terms of his contract and that is likely why the boss doesn’t care. What is the letter writer upset about?

    1. Sweet Fancy Pancakes*

      This is exactly what I was thinking. It seems like a lot, but the actual numbers don’t look like they support this level of angst.

    2. Hlao-roo*

      The only thing that makes the math work is if the company has really stingy PTO and/or the letter way sent in Nov or early Dec of 2024 (so the coworker was out 90 days so far for the year, and was expected to rack up more out-of-office days between then and the end of the year).

      If neither of those are in play, I think it could be a case of the coworker is actually in about 3 days per week on average, but there are a lot of “only in one- or two- days per week” weeks interspersed with occasional “in every day” weeks. (Based off of the following from the letter: “He’ll be in four times over two weeks,” and after discussions with the boss “My coworker shows up for a week, maybe seven days, and then starts to fall off again.”)

      That sort of ad hoc schedule probably makes it more difficult for the letter-writer to plan than it would be if the coworker were consistently in the office every Tues-Thurs (or some other stable combination of three days per week). But I still don’t think it’s worth a lot of angst.

      1. umami*

        I do believe the absences from the workplace feel bigger because OP is there all 5 days. If she weren’t, she wouldn’t even have noticed how often coworker is there.

    3. Parenthesis Guy*

      While you could be correct, the reasonable reading is that he was supposed to be in the office 140 times a year and working at home roughly 90 times. Instead, he was in the office 50 times a year and at home 180 times a year. There are 90 entries because those were days the co-worker was supposed to be in the office but wasn’t.

      1. Stuart Foote*

        No, because the letter writer claims the co-worker “didn’t show up a third of the year”. So it was 90 days missed.

    5. Elbe*

      I think you’re doing the wrong math.

      In this situation, it sounds like there is some work that can only be done in-office. When the LW is there alone, they are doing 100% of it. When they are there with their coworker, they are doing 50% of it.

      If the coworker is only there 2 days a week, that means that the LW is doing 100% of the work for three days, and 50% of the work for two days. That means that the LW is doing 80% of the in-office work. That is a very large difference, considering that they have the same job title.

  24. Landry*

    I’m unclear if the coworker is getting things done when they are WFH. If they are staying on top of things, reliable and communicative, then I’m of the belief that it doesn’t matter if they are on their couch or in the office. LW might prefer to see their face, but you can’t let your personal preferences dictate other people’s schedules.

    On the other hand, if this person isn’t accomplishing necessary tasks, falling behind on projects, taking too long to respond, etc., that’s an entirely separate issue (and one that can happen even if you are both in the office, even if the likelihood is slimmer). Try focusing on that instead of the time tracking, and use that framing if you go to your boss or someone else again. As a manager, hearing “Fergus didn’t meet X deadline, we’re behind on Y project because of his delays, etc.” will raise more alarm bells than “My spreadsheet shows Fergus didn’t come in five Wednesdays in a row.”

    1. HonorBox*

      It isn’t personal preference on LW’s part. It is part of the job requirement to be on-site three days a week. Whether or not Cecil could do the work from his couch doesn’t matter. He’s required to be in the office three times a week…for whatever reason.

      And he clearly dropped the ball when LW took PTO by not getting done what needed to be done in LW’s absence.

        1. Dust Bunny*

          However, if they’re having to cover in-office work while he’s not there but should be, they are well within their rights to be annoyed by that.

          But I don’t think they’re going to win this and should start looking for another job.

          1. bamcheeks*

            They haven’t said that they have to cover any in-office work though! They are choosing to go in 5 days a week, and the only actual problem they’ve cited with their co-worker being in 2/5 instead of 3/5 is that “when he’s here we work well together”.

            It sounds like LW basically prefers a full-time in-office colleague, and is annoyed they haven’t got that. They don’t even say that they’re supposed to be in-office for the same three days a week, so it’s not clear that this in-person collaboration is a requirement of the role at all.

        2. HonorBox*

          Not their job to cover for him or allow themselves to get run over because they’re anxious about something falling through the cracks when they take PTO again. Take the PTO. Find an alternative place to work for two days. See where the chips fall.

      2. Landry*

        I’m skeptical that the 3x a week in office requirement is as stringent as LW is making it out to be. If management was serious about it, they’d be taking steps to enforce it. Or, maybe co-worker has a different in-office arrangement because of his duties, an accommodation, something was negotiated, etc.

        I think LW is more rigid about things than her management (and maybe the company culture as a whole). It may do them some good to delete that spreadsheet, focus on their work, take the PTO and let the chips fall where they may.

      3. umami*

        But … did it need to be done? That is OP’s perspective, but it’s not clear. There doesn’t seem to be a coverage aspect to the onsite days, or the two would be coordinating to ensure coverage throughout the week. It also isn’t clear that OP was held responsible for anything the coworker didn’t get done, at least not by the boss.

  25. TheBunny*

    This is probably going to sound harsh so apologies in advance.

    1. Stop tracking your coworker. It’s none of your business what days he’s in office. And you don’t know what conversations he’s having with boss boss because those also aren’t your business. Those additional WFH days could be an accommodation you don’t know about (also because it’s not your business). And let’s say this is the case… and you say something. You’re going to look petty AND wrong AND way too concerned about coworkers.

    2. If it impacts your work…bring that up. If a call wasn’t answered because you were at lunch and he wasn’t in the office? That matters.

    A decent boss will be concerned if this is creating performance issues. That same decent boss will also care that you are tracking your coworker.

    1. Dust Bunny*

      If the job requirements were three days in office and he got another accommodation, the LW should have been told, though. It’s ridiculous to tell her that he’ll be in three days, and then tell him he doesn’t have to be, but not tell her that.

    2. Elbe*

      It could be an accommodation, but I REALLY hope it is not considering that the manager is suggesting a meeting with all of them to discuss the situation. If there was an accommodation in place, that would be really inappropriate.

      My take on it is that the in-office requirement IS a genuine need, and the other coworker is only able to slack on it because the LW is in-office every day. The manager isn’t bothered because the LW is there to pick up the slack. I don’t see why the slacker would be apologetic if that wasn’t the case. Clearly, even they recognize that them not being in office is a hardship for the LW.

      1. Mad Scientist*

        I don’t know, I could understand being apologetic simply because you’re aware that you have a judgemental coworker who tracks your every move and is annoyed at you, even if you don’t think you’ve done anything wrong.

        1. Elbe*

          This is very harsh. There’s no indication at all that the coworker knows about the sheet the LW is making.

          What we do know is that the coworker is repeatedly apologetic, goes through periods of changing his behavior, and sometimes even buys the LW lunch to make up for his lack of attendance. That’s a pretty clear indication that even Fergus thinks that this is a hardship on the LW. Their boss could also tell the LW that this isn’t a priority, but is suggesting additional meetings to handle the issue. So, while this manager is ineffective at dealing with this, it does sound like they’re acknowledging that this is an issue.

          I don’t understand the impulse to seize on the LW’s misstep in making the sheet as a reason to assume that there isn’t really an issue here.

    3. anon for this*

      A decent boss would have addressed the issue long before spreadsheets entered the chat.

      I sometimes sum up the commentariat to non-AAM readers thus:

      LW: the boss is making us all wear collars with dog tags so he can tell us apart better!!

      Commentariat: There’s an amazing sale on collar ensembles at XYZ store squeee! OP you will love wearing tags, it feels so grown up when they jingle!! Hey! Let’s have a Friday thread about accessorizing collars & tags with corporate leashes and muzzles yay!

  26. hellohello*

    I’ll be honest here, “coworker was out of the office 1/3 of the year” and “we’re allowed to work from home 2/5 of the week” does not seem like that big a discrepancy to me? LW, I suspect your preference for in-office work is muddying the waters about what the actual problem is here. The big issue is your coworker not getting his work done and not effectively covering for you when you’re out of the office, not how many days he is or isn’t in the office. (If he cannot do work or cover your work when he’s out of the office, that’s absolutely an issue, but the focus would still be “you are not accomplishing the tasks you need to do” rather than the coworkers physical location.)

    1. amoeba*

      Yeah, this. I was pretty sympathetic in general, but the maths doesn’t really add up? Would love some clarification if LW is reading here!

  27. Manders*

    I’m wondering if I’m missing something here, but it says the coworker is in 4 times over 2 weeks, and the requirement is 3X per week (or 6 times over 2 weeks). So they are obviously not following the rules there, but I think it seems like they are in even less because the OP is in every single day. Maybe take your own WFH days once per week – as unproductive as they are – and lower expectations?

  28. Magdalena*

    Did you address your concerns with your manager the way you explain them here? Because while reading your letter I kept waiting to hear ANYTHING about how your coworker’s absence is impacting your work and only at the very end did you mention – briefly and indirectly – that he doesn’t take care of things during your absence. If this letter is any indication, you might be undermining your own argument with this whole spreadsheet thing.
    I suspect there’s more to the story but you do need to spell it out to your boss. For now it looks like you are taking issue with him working on site twice a week instead of three times a week. What problems does it create for you? Are you unable to take breaks? Are you solely responsible for tasks that can only be done on-site? Does him working from home some days mean you need to be on site more? You might think the consequences of him being off-site are obvious but of your boss is off-site as well they might not be.
    Instead of focusing on what your coworker needs to do, ask yourself what you need. More in-person support? Moving some tasks off your plate? Holding coworker accountable for tasks covered during your vacations? Being allowed to work from home the same number of days? Flexible hours?
    Instead of documenting your coworker’s absences, document the impact on your work. “unable to take pto bc coworker not available”, “tasks x and y not covered, deadline missed”, “unable to contact coworker with urgent question y, important task delayed”. Your original spreadsheet might have the opposite effect than what you’re hoping for.

  29. Festively Dressed Earl*

    It took 5 paragraphs for LW to mention that CW’s absences affected their productivity. Alison is spot on about LW focusing on that in any future conversations with their manager, but at this point there may be no way to convince management that this is an actual problem instead of coworkers tattling on each other.

  30. Still*

    LW, your letter has seven paragraphs but only has one sentence about actual, concrete impact your coworkers behaviour has on your work. I hope you’ve explained the issue to your boss more clearly than you’ve explained it to us, because, other than the PTO thing, I’m unsure what the problem is. I believe you that there is a problem and that you are being impacted, I just don’t really know… how.

  31. Fotze*

    Not coming in because he has a “lack of sleep” MUST BE NICE.

    If I could use that excuse, I’d probably work one day out of the week too. Really gross how so many people get away with this, while my ass is glued to my desk 5 days a week, and a lousy 5 days of PTO all year because UNIONS SUCK AND ARE COMPLETE GARBAGE

    1. Cafe au Lait*

      Unions are a literal democracy of the people. If your union is bad, change it. There are no bad unions, just incompetent people running them.

    2. Antilles*

      Going to need you to cite some sources on “so many people get away with this”. AAM is an extremely skewed sample size here because by definition people only write in when they have issues. Nobody ever writes to AAM describing how everything is great, everybody works the requisite number of days per week, all good with attendance over here.
      Also, if your union is only getting you 5 days of PTO per year (which is way less than the average), then you need to get some new leadership. Have you considered volunteering for whatever your equivalent of the local leadership council is?

    3. hellohello*

      My union negotiated for increased PTO and sick time that any member of our staff is allowed to use when they feel unwell without fear of management retaliation. If your union leadership has only negotiated you five days of PTO a year and you feel like you are unable to use sick time when you feel unwell (whether because of lack of sleep or other illness) I’d recommend getting actively involved in your union and fighting for significantly more sick time and PTO in your next contract. 5 days is astoundingly low even for US standards, but unions are just *us*. They are made up of workers and are meant to allow workers to organize for what is most important to them.

    4. iglwif*

      so many people get away with this *Citation needed.

      If indeed your union has only managed to get you 5 days of vacation time, then your specific union absolutely needs to do better, because that’s a criminally low number of vacation days for any job. That doesn’t mean unions in general “suck and are complete garbage”.

    5. Prefer pets*

      what the heck? if you only get 5 days of leave a year, your particular union does suck. On the other hand. most unions do not.

      My supervisor would much prefer people spend what would have been commuting time sleeping for an extra hour & then teleworking so they can be productive and focused than to force themselves to stare blankly at a screen in exhaustion. and I’ve seen multiple managers over the years refuse to let an equipment operator work a job site because they were visibly tired enough they were a liability.

      instead of raging that other people get treated like reasonable adults, spend that energy on improving your situation so you get the same!

      As an example, an electrician that was doing some work for us was bitching because the fast food places had banners up trying to hire for several dollars more an hour than he was paid & he didn’t they should make more than him. I asked him if he had looked at other jobs & he was super offended. Before he left, I showed him several local ads for companies trying to hire electricians with less experience than him at almost 3 times what he was getting paid. Don’t know what he did… I switched my business to an electrical company that treats their employees well.

      1. Dr. Doll*

        That electrician needs to adjust his attitude if he wants to get hired at a place that pays 3x more than he’s making. I would not want to hire someone with a whiny downer vibe who blames everyone else for his problems.

        Good for you, Prefer pets, for switching to a better service provider even if it cost you more because they treat their workers better.

      2. iglwif*

        The “how dare a fast food place pay more than I make” people are so baffling to me. Should you be paid more? YES! Will you be in a better position if fast food workers make less? NO!

        Thank you for voting with your business by switching companies!

  32. el l*

    I would briefly email every week which tasks are your responsibility, and which are your colleague’s. Email them, CC your boss, and make sure you highlight it when your colleague is away to cover for you.

    Because now, whether work gets done is no longer your problem. It is your colleague’s problem, and then your boss’ to make sure it’s done and done right. See how that works?

    As long as you communicate, if things fall – it’s not your problem. Stop caring about coverage.

  33. i like hound dogs*

    You say “I’m talking it’s a miracle if he makes it in most of five days in a week. He’ll be in four times over two weeks.” But then you also say you are required to be in only three times a week?

    So, he’s supposed to be in three times a week and he sometimes comes in two times a week? Something from the tone of this letter makes me think the writer needs to mind their own business a bit more. Just take your PTO and let the chips fall where they may.

    At my job we also officially have to be in three times a week, but many people are sort of loose with that. I would be FURIOUS if someone tracked my in-person attendance.

    1. umami*

      Yes, we have flexible work that allows folks to be out 2 days, but if someone emails me that they are staying home on their usual onsite day for *reasonable reason* then of course I say yes. As a manager, I would be … surprised and annoyed if someone else were to come back to me with a list of what days another employee didn’t come to work. Tell me a project failed because you didn’t get timely input, or something was delayed because you couldn’t reach them. But this? Nah.

    2. Caramel & Cheddar*

      Yeah, 3/5 vs 2/5 isn’t some huge dealbreaker in my mind, though it sees to be for LW. I appreciate that the colleague isn’t fulfilling the literal definition of the hybrid requirement, but it also doesn’t seem especially egregious (e.g. coming in twice a month).

      I’m not saying this is how LW feels, but I do feel like a lot of people who opt to do 5/5 instead of hybrid are annoyed everyone else isn’t making the decision to be in the office more than required. I always wonder what the opposite letter would look like, i.e. “Help! My coworker keeps going into the office more than we’re supposed to!”

  34. Lily Potter*

    I had a job many years ago where you could WFH whenever you wanted. Our 100-or-so person workgroup didn’t really embrace it (this in the pre-Zoom/pre-text message era) but managers were not allowed to say anything about their reports working from home. Problem was that many of our tasks really needed to be done in-office (dealing with folks face to face) and those who WFH foisted off that work on people who showed up in person. Also, if someone came around looking for “Jenna” and found she wasn’t at her desk, they’d inevitably ask me or my boss for help because we were physically there (no, we couldn’t tell them to call Jenna – both of us knew Jenna’s job better than she did and it would have been frowned on big-time to deflect the work back when we were sitting RIGHT THERE). Long story short – those who WFH got the benefit of not having to deal with “drive-by” problems. I can see this LW sharing that frustration, not having to deal with the “drive by problem of the moment” and also having to spend parts of their day explaining to people where their co-worker at a given moment (at home? coming in later? sleeping? who knows?) when said co-worker is flaky about sharing that information.

    1. Elbe*

      This is my read on it, too.

      The fact that this employee is regularly apologizing and taking the LW to lunch makes it seem like there is, genuinely, a hardship falling on the LW. I don’t see why Fergus would do that if there isn’t really a problem.

      It sounds like the LW is doing 100% of the in-office work 3-4 days a week, while they are sharing the work only 1-2 days a week. That’s really a large difference for people with the same title.

    2. allathian*

      My org pretty much solved drive by problems by telling people that they needed to use the ticketing system for *all* job requests. We’ll make the occasional exception for the C-suite or all-hands-on-deck emergencies, but but even the execs saw the sense in what we were doing because it made all work much more visible and decreased the risk of misunderstandings and increased productivity, so they pretty much never abuse it.

      If driving by isn’t getting you any faster service, people will by and large stop doing it. That’s why it’s so counter-productive to move someone’s task up the priority list if they just bug you enough. When I was originally hired, my then-coworker would move things up the priority list if someone bugged her enough. She seemed to hate dealing with people at the office and would move things up the priority list just to get the interrupters to go away. It took her a while to get my point that she was only rewarding their behavior.

  35. Cleeo*

    I was hired to a job across the country to help out with my boss’s workload, which he said he can’t handle if the company continues to expand as planned. I uprooted my life to be local (this was pre-pandemic). My boss proceeded to cancel every single meeting with me, and was in the office for maybe a couple hours a week. 8 months later, I was fired for not being able to handle the work needed. I’m still fuming. The guy couldn’t take 10 minutes over the course of 8 months to talk to me, but instead decided to ditch me over a totally invalid issue. Any project that I was given (by someone else, mostly) was done above and beyond the capability of the other person on my team. And I was the problem. He also tried to deny me unemployment, which I won after a couple extremely stressful weeks.

  36. ThatDearOgre*

    Does it bother anyone that the coworkers is allowed to be home one third of the year? Supposed to be in 3/5 days. Allowed to be at home 2/5 is greater than 1/3. The “can’t take PTO” and doesn’t cover is a separate issue.

    1. Caramel & Cheddar*

      If the coworker is getting their work done, I wouldn’t care about this, no. If they aren’t, I’d care more about the fact that they weren’t getting their work done than I would about the fact that they’re not there. If you can get your work done from home, be my guest. I don’t care where you’re located, I just care if your work productivity is affecting mine.

    2. iglwif*

      I would not care about this if the coworker were in fact doing the work they’re supposed to be doing. Complaining about where an otherwise fully functional and productive coworker does their work is ridiculous.

      Clearly, in this case, the coworker is not fully functional or productive, and that’s the issue that LW needs to focus on in getting their manager to do something about it.

  37. Nomic*

    I am starting to see more, “I’m mad my co-worker works from home ” posts. Unless they are actively causing issues working from home, who cares. If they are causing issues, address the issue, not the WFH.

  38. bamcheeks*

    Talk to your manager about the PTO and then take it. But you’re complaining about someone who is in the office 2 days a week, and the main reason you’ve got for want them there three days a week is that you like the company. As a manager, I wouldn’t consider that a good enough reason to require someone who was in 2 days a week and otherwise performing well to come in 3 days.

  39. bleh*

    Unions are the only way for a group of workers to contend with the group of share holders and managers who can and sometimes do take advantage of them. There is power in numbers, and you never have one manager or one board member issuing policies, hours, or wages, so why should one worker bargain against the large group.

  40. SunnyShine*

    OP – is the problem that he isn’t in the office when he is working from home? Or is the problem that you want to work from home more often?

    As a manager, I can’t really stand “principle-of-the-matter” type of people. It largely ignores the human aspect of workers. If you want to work from home, ask if you can. By tracking and complaining, it makes you look inflexible.

    If there is a problem where you are picking up his work, then stop. If your boss tells you to pick up your co-worker’s work, then go talk to your grand boss.

    Don’t create problems where there isn’t any.

    1. Caramel & Cheddar*

      LW says “I prefer to work in the office five days a week because home is a distraction-filled wasteland for me.”

      I do think, even if you’re willingly doing it, a lot of people who prefer full-time in-office work still seem to get mad that other people don’t, like by doing hybrid work you’re somehow implying it’s silly to be in the office full time. I have yet to meet a hybrid person who cares that some of their colleagues are in the office five days a week, though I’m sure they’re out there somewhere.

      1. allathian*

        Our official policy is 1 day a week at the office, but managers have a lot of discretion in how much they monitor this, if at all. I work for a distributed team and my current manager works from another office, and none of us see any point in going to the office to sit on Teams calls all day if we have no other reason to go there. I have a few coworkers who go to the office every day, by preference. But none of them have given me a hard time because I prefer WFH, even if they’ve been happy to see me when I’ve gone to the office.

  41. Bananapants*

    I know the LW mentions going away and coming back to a pile of things that didn’t get done, but on a day-to-day basis is this coworker making it hard for LW to do their job? If not, I’d say try to stop caring so much. If so, that should absolutely be brought up with manager.

    1. Mad Scientist*

      We also don’t know if it was actually a big deal that certain things didn’t get done while LW was out. It could be that those tasks were lower priority than whatever her coworker was working on at the time. Sure it may be annoying for LW but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily an issue from her manager’s POV.

    2. Betty*

      I feel like going away and coming back to a pile of work is normal? I include alternate contacts in my out of office message so any urgent matters get dealt with, but no one is doing my job 100% for me when I’m out.

  42. Mad Scientist*

    Anyone else curious if the goal of that group meeting between LW, coworker, and their boss is more about getting the LW to back off and learn how to mind her business, not trying to get the coworker to change his ways? Because that’s the conversation I’d be wanting to have if I were the manager in this situation.

    1. Caramel & Cheddar*

      I hope not, because that’s something the boss can address with LW one-on-one without the coworker present.

      1. Mad Scientist*

        True, but depending on what they’re hearing from the coworker’s side and given that the manager is remote, I can see why they might feel the need to have a sort of mediation meeting to make sure everyone is on the same page. It could be a combination of LW needing to accept and respect her coworker’s schedule but the coworker also needing to be more available and communicative when he works remotely.

    2. Elbe*

      This is a very strange read.

      Additional details about the hardship this puts on the LW would be helpful, but the LW isn’t a professional writer. It’s common for people here to not include all of the details that we would want. Still, there IS enough in the letter to indicate that both the manager and Fergus acknowledge that this is an issue.

      It says right in the letter that the manager has talked to Fergus about his attendance before, and that Fergus’s attendance improves for a period after. It’s not a huge leap to think that the boss is telling him he needs to show up to work. It’s also not a huge leap to think that a job that literally has “on-site” in the title would have a significant amount of on-site work, and that not showing up would negatively affect coworkers. Even if the LW isn’t spelling things out 100%, I don’t know how you’re reaching the conclusion that the LW is the person most at fault here.

      1. Magdalena*

        I for one absolutely believe there’s an issue. A good manager would want to get to the bottom of what the actual impact on OP is and ask the relevant questions.
        But from the letter it appears that OP’s communication with the boss might not be effective enough and it’s on OP’s interest to spell things out as clearly as possible to the boss even if the boss does not ask enough questions.

      2. Tau*

        This!

        No, LW didn’t go into detail on how Fergus’s lack of attendance puts a hardship on her. But I’m still puzzled at the amount of people who are jumping to the conclusion that there isn’t one, given that she mentions:
        * work not getting done when she’s off
        * the manager having conversations with Fergus, after which attendance improves for a while
        * Fergus being very apologetic about his absence and trying to make it up to LW
        * Fergus giving excuses when he’s not in – excuses which very often preclude being fully productive as far as work goes (family funeral, stomachache, lack of sleep).

        It’s definitely good advice for LW to focus more on the actual business impact of Fergus’ absence when she talks about this and also to just take her PTO and let the chips fall where they may. But jumping to the conclusion that there *isn’t* a business impact and she’s just being a rules-lawyer who needs to butt out is an unlikely and, I’d argue, unkind read of this letter.

        1. Myrin*

          Not to mention that the job literally has “on-site” in the title – surely that’s not there just for shits and giggles!

        2. Paris Geller*

          A lot of commenters here strongly defend the right to WFH in every scenario, even when a role needs on-site time at least some of the time.

          1. ubotie*

            Word, Paris. And the way they talk about what they get up to while they are WFH, it’s those kinds of antics that get WFH privileges yanked for everyone else.

        3. Mad Scientist*

          There’s room for both possibilities. Sure, there could be a business impact and the coworker may need to improve his in-person attendance. But the LW may also need to adjust her expectations and stop monitoring her coworker’s time like this. Both can be true at the same time. And I doubt the manager would request this meeting if it would just be to tell one side how wrong they are. I think it’s more likely that the manager wants to resolve this conflict and get everyone on the same page, which likely means some change and compromise on both sides. I also think it’s an interesting possibility because the LW hasn’t seemed to consider it. They seem pretty convinced that their coworker is the one who needs to change, but I doubt their boss views the situation as black-and-white as they do.

    3. SunnyShine*

      As a manager, the only time I have group meetings like this is because of personality conflicts. And yes, it’s a “you need to leave each other alone and figure out a better way of working” kind of meeting. The manager is not going to make her co-worker come in more if he is suggesting a group meeting.

      1. Mad Scientist*

        Yeah, this is what I’m thinking. It seems like a mediation sort of meeting to resolve a personality conflict.

  43. Consonance*

    I think the very usual advice to “document, document, document” might have led you down the garden path in this instance. In this type of situation, you should document *your* actions and *your* dropped balls (like what didn’t happen because you were on PTO). Not *their* schedule.

  44. Observer*

    LW, I’m going to reinforce what a lot of the commenters have said.

    Why exactly is this your business? It’s not your job, so stay out of it.

    Take your PTO, and document anything that directly affects you, your work, or the work in general – but that part only if your boss would otherwise not have real visibility to.

    Definitely stop tracking his attendance. But, if you think your boss is going to blow you off, track *impacts*. EG:

    1/27/2025 –
    CW was supposed to provide a memo for the Quark Account’s new furniture. Although I tried to reach him to remind him, he did not send the memo, and so we fell behind on provisioning the Quark Account.

  46. Elle*

    Just throwing this out there. I had a coworker track my time once just like this. I had intermittent FMLA, which they were not aware of- and as they were a coworker, it was none of their business.

    They complained to my boss and my boss told them there were arrangements in place regarding my attendance, but that it was none of her (coworker’s) concern. We didn’t even have the same job duties, my attendance didn’t affect her, she was just someone who wanted to create issues.

    Maybe your manager isn’t handling this well, but I do wonder if OP’s manager had told them some form of “it’s not your concern”.

    1. Elbe*

      It says in the letter that the manager is actually suggesting having a meeting with all three of them to resolve the issue, so it doesn’t seem to be the case that the manger has said “Fergus has my permission.”

      I’m a little confused about why so many people here are implying that the LW is a busybody who is inventing problems when both the boss and Fergus (the only two other people involved) seem to acknowledge that it is an issue to some degree. I don’t know anyone who go so far as buying their coworker lunch as an apology if not being in the office didn’t cause any hardship for that person.

      1. Aggretsuko*

        Why does LW have to meet with Fergus, though? Why isn’t the boss just making Fergus show up and prove that he shows up? I get the vibe that boss wants to do nothing but possibly “negotiate” that LW is fine with Fergus not showing up.

      2. Elle*

        The reason I think she’s a busy body is really the spreadsheet. That’s not her concern. The ultimate issue is work not getting done.

        The manager may just not be great at dealing with this. I don’t know why the three of them would have a meeting- maybe to clearly see what’s being missed and work on solutions. It may not be about his time out, per se.

        Outside of that, I often felt guilty for time missed, even though it was a legit reason and I was caught up on work. Who knows what may be going on with her coworker. Either way it’s not her concern. She can and should address work not being completed, and leave it at that.

        1. Elbe*

          The spreadsheet was a misstep, but it’s understandable with the context that the LW is considering taking this to their grandboss. Anyone would want hard data if they were to take a drastic step like that. It’s not something that I would advise, but it doesn’t seem to be an indication that the LW is making a mountain out of a molehill.

          Based on what is in the letter, there’s a ton of reason to think that Fergus’s attendance is actually affecting the LW (and that the LW has been dealing with this for years) and it makes me feel bad that so many of the comments here are so dismissive. Even if there’s nothing the LW can do in the situation, the situation sounds pretty sympathetic.

  47. Feline Meteorologist*

    I wholeheartedly live by the motto (well, hope) that if someone went to my boss and told them I checked my phone 23 times every hour, averaging 1.5 minutes each, my boss would ask them if they needed more to do, because if they have all that time to track me, they must have free time. And I think the same if I notice one person WFH more than allowed, or is always on Reddit, etc, etc—just because I notice it, doesn’t mean it’s impacting their work, and if it is, my boss is already well aware of the problems.

    Honestly, I cannot overstate how little I care about what others do (at my work).

    1. Mad Scientist*

      Yep, absolutely. I think it would just make my boss laugh if someone told them something like that. I try to let my work speak for itself.

  48. Me*

    OP: make sure you are being paid more than Fergus since you are doing most of the work. If you leave, your company will feel the pain.

  49. Bike Walk Barb*

    There’s an interpersonal element here that’s another tool. I don’t know that I’d be accepting apology lunches at this point. You’re accepting apologies that are meaningless because your coworker isn’t changing his behavior.

    What would happen if you said something like this? “I know you’d like me to accept your apology. Honestly, I can’t. It feels insincere when you keep apologizing over and over, but you don’t change the pattern of behavior you’re apologizing for. It’s really great to work with you when you’re here and I’d like to get to do that more often but you’d have to show up for the on-site part of our job description. I don’t feel as if I can count on you to take care of things when I’m out because you don’t keep a dependable schedule. It’s all really disappointing.” And then wait.

    It may not have the same effect as a boss telling him he needs to show up more often, but it does have some power. If he appreciates working with you when he’s in the office maybe this would jar him into some change. You don’t have to accept a meaningless apology over and over.

  50. Kimmitt*

    LW, your only real problem is that you aren’t taking your PTO. So take it! It’s your manager’s job to schedule others to cover your stuff during your PTO. See if they do! If they do, you literally have no problems. If they don’t, then they messed up their issue themselves.

  51. cncx*

    This has happened to me in not one but three jobs. It is a job that can be done from home but does require on site a couple times a week.

    In job one, I had a deal with my coworker, approved by boss and grand boss ,that he picked up more of the remote tasks and was generally more flexible with tasks that came up early in the morning or late at night. I was the butt in chair. At home coworker was a star and he came in when I was out. This is how you change up wfh requirements.

    In job two, there was less of a remote component, people in home office were only doing about twenty percent of their jobs, which was ok once a week, but created an imbalance in the team. The problem is the coworker would decide at like 930 they were home office when the shift started at 8. Surprise, they lost their job for performance reasons.

    In job three, the coworker thought he had a deal with me but the reality was the company was very weird about butt in chair and while I tried to cover for him (“oh but he is definitely green on teams”) it became a problem beyond the team. He tried to blame it on his commute but two people who reliably came in had the same commute. While I understand this story is ongoing, the refusal to come in has hit his reputation hard, for this and other things.

    I think it boils down to how much is the person a team player, and how much of the office culture is butt in chair. And also, like for my first coworker, how notice much the team on site has for absence. Calling in wfh the day of is not ok as a permanent choice.

  52. Little My*

    I need to point something out about the math here. LW says the coworker was out for a third of the year, which means he was in office for 2/3 of the year. 2/3 of 5 days is 3.33 days a week. That’s more than the minimum in-office attendance requirement. LW says she wouldn’t mind if he came in exactly 3 days a week, but that doesn’t seem to be true! She needs to let go of the attendance question and focus on the work.

    1. Myrin*

      I mean, that’s probably because his only-in-office-one-day-a-week weeks are, as OP says herself, interspersed with times where his manager talked to him and he’s in daily for one or even two weeks – that’s bound to even out over the course of the year but doesn’t help OP if his attendance is supposed to be more spread out on a week-to-week basis.

  53. Lisa Frank*

    Not sure if this has been addressed, but there’s a wonky line of keeping track and having a record and documentation, and leaving things well enough alone. I can see where LW got this idea and habit. I’m not hating on her for it.

  54. Murph*

    I am thinking about this from the coworker’s perspective: “I work a job that is technically in-person three days a week, but our office is lax on that as long as the work is being done. I have had several conversations with my manager about how this requirement is flexible. I come in at least two days a week, but I have been having a difficult year with illness (stomach issues) and deaths in my family.

    I have a coworker who comes in every day and is very upset that I do not go in there as much, to the point of keeping a secret spreadsheet tracking my time in. I know she has escalated this to my manager. I try to keep her updated on my schedule, and I have even bought her lunch to smooth things over, but I fear I am placating her when my time in/out is none of her business. My work is output is fine and being in more is just her preference. She is very conscientious, to the point of not taking PTO. Work gets done differently with half of our team, but we’re not missing deadlines or falling majorly behind.

    We’re going to have a conversation as a trio in the next few weeks — how do I approach this?”

    To me, this teeters between “this is an actual issue because we’re not getting things done” and “I have different preferences than my teammate.”

  55. Grith*

    I had a former colleague who used to track things like this on a spreadsheet, in his case, factory mistakes. What he didn’t realise was 1) the factory manager was already tracking this separately 2) it was already being dealt with and 3) he was a junior employee who starting to really annoy everyone by sticking his nose in to higher-level concerns.

    Suffice to say, his constant desire to spend time on this spreadsheet, analysing the data in it, and significant overreach in terms of who he showed this spreadsheet to was not appreciated. If LW really wants to track things, they shouldn’t be nominal attendance, they should be issues that their coworker has caused, and that wouldn’t necessarily be tracked by anyone else. I absolutely wouldn’t go near you boss wit what essentially amounts to your take on someone else’s timesheet!

  56. ubotie*

    Is this Mr. Rochester’s house and whenever Steve doesn’t show up, it’s on the LW to make sure Rochester’s first wife doesn’t escape the attic and burn everything down? So if the LW takes time off or prioritizes tasks based on Steve’s in-office days, there’s the real consequence of Bertha escaping the attic, blinding her idiot husband, and burning the house down?

    Do the LW and Steve work in HVAC maintenance and whenever Steve isn’t around, it’s on the LW to triage HVAC emergencies, deal with walk-in customers (if the business is set up for that), answer the phones, catch up on paperwork, etc?

    Is this a daycare center and whenever Steve effs off to who knows where, the center is now under the required quota of adults to children? In addition to all the extra work for LW to watch those kids?

    Oh my god, are Steve and the LW nursing supervisors at a hospital or nursing home so whenever Steve doesn’t show up, the LW has to stay late??? And it just creates a domino effect of effing over everyone else’s shift??? But nursing is so short-handed that of course Steve won’t get fired even if he starts Angel of Death-ing 20 patients a day under the CEO’s nose? (Seriously, read some articles about previous Angel of Death nurses to see how they escaped detection for so long). But administration is freaking out about all that overtime that LW is racking up from having to stay late? So of course, LW can’t take PTO (hahah in nursing??? Oh my god) or re-prioritize tasks based on Steve’s whereabouts–people might actually die! Or not get their meds for hours. Or not get their meds at all during that shift. Or not get changed when they wet themselves. Or the charting will never get done. Or the scheduling won’t get done. Etc etc etc.

    Anyway, this is where the llama obfuscation stuff can be really detrimental. But it’s also why the LW needs to just start taking PTO and stop covering for Steve. And probably just also start job searching. Because if it’s any of the non-Jane-Eyre situations I described, they’re just going to get thrown under the bus anyway.

    And in all of these scenarios, the LW taking their PTO or prioritizing tasks will have real consequences for themselves and their clients/customers, and they are concerned about that blow-back? Again, all of that is still ultimately the concern of their boss and higher ups but I could definitely understand why the LW would be hesitant to just let the chips fall where they may.

  57. OriginalLW*

    hey all, original lw here.

    first, the spreadsheet has been deleted! I appreciate having someone just straight up tell me that the emotional grief it’s causing is not worth it, because frankly it’s very hard for me to tell (those who called neurospicy were ON IT lol)

    second, for some clarity, I would care significantly less if work was getting done when he was at home. it’s not and I AM covering. people he’s doing work for will come to me for updates, ask where he’s been and so on. a big part of our position is being present to assist people who are in the office. our required presence is for people who are in the office for things that can only be addressed there.

    third and related to the above, I very much appreciate the advice from both Alison and our comentariate here to just take the time off. it’s very hard for me to ‘not care’ or take actions I perceive as not caring, which is not at all on my coworker or boss, and if I just take the time off maybe the pain train will travel up the chain (thanks for that lovely mental mantra that will help me stick with this!). at the very least it’s not in my hands any longer.

    thanks for addressing this and giving some much needed perspective.

    originallw

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