Ask a Manager

This is a transcript of “My Coworker Gets Away with Everything.”

Alison: Hi, and welcome to the show! Today I’m going to answer a whole bunch of questons from people. The first question today is from someone with a terrible coworker:

Caller 1: Back story: my coworker has a family member who was a pretty big deal in the company. Said relative has since retired, but her legacy sort of lives on. My coworker seems to get away with EVERYTHING. She treats her superiors with no respect, does whatever she wants, never has consequences. I have literally heard her say to our manager “no I am not going to do that” and just walks away. She is constantly complaining about how busy she is (I think in hopes no one will assign her more work) but she never even does the work that is assigned to her. I get stuck with it.

I am constantly seeing her on her computer; looking at real estate, shopping, just browsing the internet. If she’s not doing that, she is socializing with other people, talking about work. She just never does any work, and it all falls onto me. I am getting sick of it. Whenever I try to go to my manager, I get a “I can’t do anything about it, my hands are tied.” If I try going above my manager, I get scolded, saying that she is “not your problem, stay in your lane, and do your own work.” I’m looking for what I can do to not have to pick up her slack. I’m getting a little fed up with it. Signed, at a loss and drowning in someone else’s work.

Alison:  Okay, One of the biggest things to realize in a situation like this is that while your coworker is terrible, your manager is the problem too – because your manager is not managing. She’s not doing her own job, which is to deal with a situation like this. Now, maybe it’s not your manager herself who’s the problem. Maybe it’s someone above her who’s made it clear that this coworker is untouchable. But someone somewhere in the management above you is just as much of a problem as this coworker is, if not more, because they’re being negligent about the situation, when they are the person who is charged with dealing with it. Usually when that happens it’s because the manager in question is a wimp and isn’t willing to deal with the hassle and the awkwardness of addressing this kind of situation, and going through the process of firing someone. (I’m assuming firing would be the solution here, because she sounds so far gone that it doesn’t sound salvageable – although who knows, maybe if someone in authority were willing to address the situation head-on, maybe she’d shape up. But for our purposes here, it doesn’t really matter – what you need to know is that (a) people above you areaware of the situation and (b) they’ve told you pretty clearly that nothing is going to change.

Now, if you were asking me “how do I be okay with this?” that would be a different conversation, one about to find a way to be comfortable with such an obvious double standard for you and your coworker. But I don’t think that’s your question – I think you’re asking about how to not get stuck with her work. There are some things you can try that might work beautifully, or you might try them and discover that they don’t work at all – but either way, if you do give them a shot, at the end of this process, you’re going to have better data about your situation than you do right now and can make better decisions about where to go from there.

So here’s what I’d recommend: You presumably have a full-time workload of your own. So when your boss asks you to take on your coworker’s work, don’t look for a way to cram it all in, especially if that would lead to you being overworked, stressed, or pushing back other deadlines. Instead, when that happens, what you want to say is something like, “I’ve got my hands full with X, Y, and Z right now so I’d need to take some of that off my plate to make room for this.” In other words, don’t be endlessly accommodating – spell out for your manager all the work that is keeping you busy, be clear when you don’t have room for more, be clear about what the trade-offs are that you and she would have to make if she wants you to take that on, and put the problem back on her plate, which is where it belongs. Does she want you to do less of something else to make room for this? Or does she want to find some other solution, such as perhaps managing your coworker, or bringing in other help, or whatever it might be  that she decides to do, you’re conveying here the solution to this problem is not going to be you.

Now, you MAY get told that you just need to do it all – which would be tremendously unfair if your coworker is doing nothing. If that happens, then at that point you need to accept okay, this is the situation – I’m going to have to do all of coworker’s work plus my own – and you can decide if you’re interested in staying in the job knowing that those are the conditions, that you’ve tried what you can try to determine that, those are the conditions, and then you decide or you’d rather go elsewhere.

One exception to this, that can complicate things a bit: If you actually do have plenty of room on your plate to do your coworker’s stuff, in some ways that makes this harder and in some ways makes it easier. It makes it easier in that you can actually, physically do the work without hardship so you’re not stuck trying to figure out how to cram it all in or taking on a bunch of additional stress. But it makes it harder in that it’s harder to push back on your boss. You can’t really say, “Well, if you want me to do X, then I can’t do Y” when it’s really clear to both of you that you actually could do both. In that case, this is less about workload problems than it is about the fundamental unfairness of the situation. And that would mean that you’ve got to decide, can find a way to be okay with that or maybe you can’t. Sometimes it’s doable – sometimes you can internally roll your eyes at your coworker and your management and know that it’s ridiculous and unfair, but also that this is part of the package of working there, and maybe you decide that as frustrating as this is, it’s worth to you to stay there for other reasons – you know, you have a great commute, or good salary, or you love the work, or whatever it might be. And in that case, maybe you focus on the fact that you’re building yourself a great reputation while your terrible coworker is building herself a pretty bad one and that’s going to limit her options if she ever wants to work somewhere else – or if her management at your company ever changes and someone more competent comes in to manage her, she’s going to be in a very bad position. You might find that just by focusing on that, you can be okay enough with the situation. Or maybe you decide that no, this is too frustrating and you don’t want to deal with it long-term and so you’re going to look elsewhere. Either of those is a legitimate way to go. It’s really just about getting really clear in your own mind on what will and won’t change about the situation, making sure you test those assumptions by doing the sort of conversation I described with your boss, and then making decisions accordingly.

But do try pushing back on the extra work first and seeing what happens because if up until now, you’ve just been taking it on with no pushback, that might be the element here that you can play with. 

This next question is from someone whose coworker might be leaving, and she’s interested in her job – but nothing is public yet. Here’s the question.

Caller 2: I have a coworker who is generally pretty nosy and shares a lot of gossip around the office. And she’s mentioned that one of my coworkers who is in a position that I’ve been talking about wanting is talking about leaving. My supervisor doesn’t know this yet and my coworker keeps pulling me into her office, to advise me on dropping some hints to my supervisor so that when the time comes and this person says that she’s going to leave, I’ll already be talking to him about wanting this position. I feel a little uncomfortable about this, it’s not really my style, and doesn’t really fit the conversations me and my supervisor and I have. So I would really love some help.

Alison: My first reaction here is that your coworker seems weirdly invested in this. It’s one thing to mention to you that your other coworker might be leaving and that you could speak up since you’d be interested in moving into her job – that’s fine for her to suggest. Once. But the fact that she keeps pulling you into her office to push about this is strange, and it makes me wonder what her agenda is. Maybe she’s just a busybody – there are certainly lots of people who are just busybodies – but I’m put off by how pushy she’s being about something that is really none of her business.

I also wonder if your other coworker – the one who might be leaving – even knows that this is happening! If she talked to your pushy coworker in confidence, it’s really not cool for your pushy coworker to be sharing that news with other people. That’s just speculation though, since I don’t know all of those details, but those are the first two things I was thinking about when I heard your question.

As for what to do, I do think it’s fine to mention to your manager that you’re really interested in moving into a position like your coworker’s. Don’t mention that you heard she might be leaving that’s not yours to share – and that doesn’t sound like that’s something you’re contemplating doing, but I just want to emphasize that — but you could say something like, “You know, I’m really interested in moving into a role like Jane’s. If that kind of position ever opens up here, I’d love to talk to you about it.” That’s it! Don’t keep bringing it up or anything, but now you’ll have planted the seed in your boss’s mind. And if you arereally interested in moving into that type of job, it’s a good thing to mention anyway, totally regardless of what might or might not be going on with your coworker, because you never know. They could plan to add a new slot and hire someone for it without realizing you would have been interested. So it’s good to mention regardless and it’s not at all weird to say something like that to your boss.

But do tell your pushy coworker that you appreciate the heads-up but you respect your other coworker’s privacy and you don’t want to really want to keep talking about it until she’s made a public announcement that she’s actually leaving. And then if she doesn’t listen to that and still keeps pulling you into her office and hounding you about this, it’s okay to just say, “You know, I’ve got this. Thanks for giving me the heads-up, but I’m on it.”

Here’s the next listener question. This one is about food at work:

Caller 3: Every day, I take my breakfast to work. I typically bring my lunch, and I usually have a snack in the late afternoon since I exercise after work and usually don’t eat dinner until late. Lately I’ve been running into an issue with one of our HR managers. She commented about a month ago that she feels like she sees me eating all the time and wonders where it all goes. She has taken to making a comment every time she sees me with food of any kind, even if it’s at a normal time like lunch. These comments make me super uncomfortable.

First, I don’t think it’s anyone’s business but mine when, what, or how much I eat, and I don’t think I should have to justify any of my habits. Second, I have kind of a rocky relationship with food, and used to struggle with disordered eating. So when she makes these kinds of comments, I just want to scream “WELL I USED TO NOT EAT ANYTHING.”

She makes them directly to me and around other people, too. I’ve shot back with things like “it’s lunchtime,” but it doesn’t seem to stop the comments. It’s getting to the point where I don’t want to eat or even carry my food where she can see me because I know she’ll make a comment. But she sits near me, near the kitchen, and has even stopped by my desk to make these kinds of jokes and comments.

I know this seems like a petty issue, but for someone who has and does struggle with their relationship with food, comments like this kind of get to you. How do I shut this down without screaming, crying, or completely losing it?

Alison: You know, it doesn’t seem like a petty issue at all, particularly in your case because of the history of an eating disorder, but it’s crazy how many questions I get that are some version of coworkers being inappropriate about food – commenting on other people’s food, pushing food on them that they don’t want, making judgy comments about what they’re eating, saying they eat too much, saying they eat too little – it’s like a weird national pastime. And I think this question that you’re asking is especially important because it’s a reminder that these comments, as annoying as they are, they can be more than annoying too. If someone is dealing with disordered eating or has an eating disorder in their past, that kind of comment can go beyond annoying and actually be really harmful. (And frankly, I’d argue they’re harmful no matter what because as a society we’re just so incredibly weird about food and diets and bodies, and it’s not helpful to play into that. But that’s a separate rant.)

Plus, let’s take a moment to note that the person doing this to you is in HR! Not that HR people all get training in this kind of thing, because loads of them don’t, in fact most of them I think don’t, but it would be nice if people in HR did hold themselves to a higher level of accountability about this sort of thing. But tons of them don’t, even in big companies where they should know better. It’s very strange.

Anyway, if you want to get this to stop, you’ve got two basic options, and they both revolve around being more direct. So, the first one is to just be direct in the moment. The next time she comments on your food or your eating, you could say really directly, “Could you please stop commenting on my food? It’s gotten uncomfortable.” Or you could say, “Hey, please stop commenting on my my eating” and just leave it there. Now, this is going to feel awkward and uncomfortable! If you’re sitting here listening to this thinking, “OMG that sounds so rude, I would never be comfortable saying that,” I want to say that the fact that something feels awkward is not in itself a sign that you shouldn’t be doing it. Sometimes things are just awkward, and that’s just how they go. In this case, she is actually the one making things awkward, not you. You’ve tried nicely hinting for her to stop, and she’s refusing to pick up on what you’re saying. So you’ve tried giving her the benefit of the doubt, you’ve tried being kind, it’s not working, and at this point if you want to get through to her, you’re going to have to be more blunt. And I know that lots of people really, really don’t like doing that because it feels rude – so I want to emphasize you are not the one being rude here. She is forcing you to be more direct than you’d normally want to be by being rude herself. The Captain Awkward advice blog has a great phrase for this – she calls it “returning awkwardness to sender,” and that’s what you’d be doing here – you’d be putting the awkwardness back where it originated from, which is with your colleague. And really, there’s nothing wrong with a very simple “Hey, this bothers me. Can you stop it?”

So that is option 1. You would have like a minute or two of feeling awkward or uncomfortable, but it would probably get her to stop.

Your second option is something you may or may not be up for, and it would be stopping by her office and addressing this in a slightly more serious way. This might feel like making a bigger deal out of it than you want to, and that’s a completely fine reason to decide not to do it, but there is some value in taking this approach if you want to do it, because it would allow you to have a potentially more meaningful conversation with her. So you could stop by and you could say something like, “Hey, I wanted to make a request of you. I’ve noticed that you really frequently comment on my food and other people’s food – like saying that you don’t know where I put it all or so forth. I’m sure you’re just making conversation and you mean well, but I want to ask you to stop making those comments, at least to me. You probably haven’t thought of this, but a lot of people have disordered eating in their pasts or are struggling with it currently, and those kinds of comments can land much differently than you intend them.”  Now, that language isn’t revealing anything about yourself specifically – although she may read between the lines and realize it’s likely that you might be talking about yourself – and that might be more than you want to do. And if you don’t want to, that’s fine! You still have option #1. But if you’re willing to take on the conversation, it might be a real service, both to her (because she’s unknowingly walking around alienating people and making them feel uncomfortable) and to other people who are bothered by her comments too.

And if she’s a kind person, she might feel a little stung in the moment but she will appreciate the feedback and should come to realize that you’re pointing out something that is important and that she hadn’t thought about. And if she’s not a kind person, there’s not much that can be done about that no matter what you say to her, but it’s worth starting from the assumption that she is kind or at least reasonable and seeing what happens.

Here’s our next question.

Caller 4: I am a librarian and I always wanted to be one. Now I’ve been one professionally for more than 20 years… and I am so unhappy.

Current job has been rough in the past four years and is toxic. I am excellent at what I do, get good annual reviews, and want to do more, but the opportunities for internal advancement have dried up. In fact, I’ve heard more than once “You’ve been here too long.” It’s not unusual for academics to stay in a job due to location, but it’s getting to me, especially when I’m being passed over. The stress has gotten to be too much and often shows up as anger, which I don’t show at work, but bleeds all over my personal life. (And yes, I’m seeking help.)

I’ve been on the job market for nearly three years both locally and nationally. While I had several really good interviews, none of that worked out and now my husband has achieved the equivalent of tenure, so moving would have to make it the PERFECT job, not just the next job.

So, I’m looking at leaving librarianship, my vocation and identity of twenty years. You’ve wrote often on figuring out how to stay in a toxic or bad or limited job if you need to. I’m not sure I can do that, which has turned into a real soul searching issue. With the exception of ubiquitous teenaged jobs, I’ve never worked anywhere but a library.  I have a fantastic skill set that will hold me in good stead outside of academia. But how do I come to terms with going from a vocation to a job?

Alison: Oh, this is so hard! It’s terrible to feel like you’ve found work that fulfills you, and then realize that you can’t do it anymore, for whatever reason. For the purpose of answering this question, I’m going to take it as a given that you really do need to leave librarianship – I don’t have enough details to question your conclusion there, and you know your situation far better than I do. So we will assume you do indeed need to move into another field.

I would not assume that you’ll be going from a vocation – something that feels like a calling – to something that’s just a job. Maybe you will be. But it’s very possible that you’ll end up doing something else that also brings you some fulfillment. Maybe not in exactly the same ways or the same quantities, but I suspect there’s more than one type of work out there that you can find happiness in. I think it can be really hard to see when you’ve been doing something for a long time and your identity is wrapped up in it. In some ways it’s like ending a long marriage! But I want to urge you not to look at it as “I was doing this thing you loved, and now I’ll just be working for a paycheck and nothing else” because it’s very likely that there are other things out there that you will find satisfaction in.

But let’s do worst case scenario here and talk about what if you don’t. I actually kind of love figuring out worst case scenarios for myself – I know that sounds weird, but for me at least, there’s something very comforting about figuring out, what’s the worst thing that could happen here, and then ok, and how would I deal with that if it does happen? For me, if I don’t do that, then I just have this free-floating worry in my head and it just makes me feel worried and anxious. But if I have a plan and I know what I would do if the worst happens, that’s pretty reassuring. In most cases, I realize that I would be fine. Things might not be ideal, but they’d be survivable. So, in your case, the worst case scenario, I think that you’re worried about, is that you never find satisfying work again and you end up going to work every day just for the paycheck and you have to figure out an identity that makes you happy that’s totally separate from your professional life.

That actually isn’t too bad. You would be joining the tens of millions of other people who have jobs like that. It’s very, very normal to be invested in your job primarily for the money and not be super into it beyond that. That’s actually most people in the world! I think that when you’re in a field that a lot of people go into because of passion for the work – like librarianship – it can be easy to forget that, because you’re surrounded by people who also are very wrapped up in what they do. But there’s really isn’t wrong with just working for the money! And there are still ways to find satisfaction from your job even when that’s the case. Sometimes it’s the satisfaction of just making something work well, or solving a problem, or being the really competent, go-to person on your team who gets a lot of respect from your colleagues. There are lots of ways to feel good about your work even if it doesn’t feel like a calling.

I think we do people in our culture this tremendous disservice by teaching them that they’re supposed to find work that they’re passionate about. It’s amazing when that does happen – that’s a wonderful thing, but it’s sort of like winning the professional lottery – but it doesn’t happen for the majority of the world’s population, and we need to do a better job of letting people know that they haven’t failed if it doesn’t happen for them. I think that by telling people they should follow their dreams professionally, we set them up for a lot of angst and despair when that’s hard to do, or in a situation like yours. We’d all be so much better off as a culture if  we had a different model for work – one that says “it’s okay for work to just be the thing that support the rest of your life, and you can find fulfillment from family or friends or hobbies or pets or whatever it might be.” It doesn’t have to be this professional bliss that we’ve been told we’re supposed to be striving for.

So if is how it turns out for you, that’s okay! And there can be something very liberating about realizing that – it can take some of the pressure off.

But also – and not to undermine that message – I also think it’s very likely that coming from a field like librarianship, where you have a lot of skills that are going to be valuable and transfer to other fields, like research, you have a pretty good chance at finding work that does bring you some measure of fulfillment. Maybe it won’t be your identify the way that librarianship was, but maybe that’s not a terrible thing! Maybe you’ll find that there’s a different type of fulfillment, maybe even a better type, from building your identity separately from what you do for money. I think it’s worth going into it being open to it playing out that way, or at least not devastated by a belief that it won’t, and then just see what happens.

That’s our show for today! Before we wrap up, I wanted to note, you may have noticed that all of these callers were women! I get way more calls and letters from women than from men – both here on the podcast and also on my website. I think to some extent that is just how it tends to be with advice columns. But I want to make sure that any men listening know that this show is for you too, so call in with your questions as well! You canrecord a question for the show by calling (855) 426-WORK. That’s 855-426-9675 – and you can leave a voicemail for me to play on the show. Or, if you have a longer question, a question where you’d want to actually come on the show and talk with me, email it to podcast@askamanager.org.

That’s it for today! I’ll be back next time with more questions.

You can see past podcast transcripts here.