problem employee or youthful hijinks, music in a shared hotel room, and more Ask a Manager

problem employee or youthful hijinks, music in a shared hotel room, and more

Posted: 24 Jun 2018 09:03 PM PDT

It's five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. Is this new hire a problem employee, or is it just youthful hijinks?

This isn't the most important question, but it's turned into the Yanny/Laurel of a networking group. We love your site and we'd be honored to hear your thoughts!

We're divided in opinion over the recent behavior of a new hire at one of our workplaces, a small company in a technical niche industry. New Guy is just out of school with no previous experience in the field and this is his first industry job. New Guy appears to be bright based on his degree, and he expresses eagerness to move up from entry level very quickly.

New Guy is in his training period. Last week, he approached a coworker (a member of the networking group) about training with them. Coworker assumed New Guy had been directed to do this as part of his training rotation. It turns out that New Guy did this on his own initiative and didn't clear it with his coordinator, who had other plans for him. New Guy was sent back to his original assignment once this was discovered. Coworker was embarrassed but learned a lesson about verifying assignments before proceeding.

Here are the positions: Some feel that New Guy showed hustle and moxie and find this be a hilarious no harm no foul episode. Others feel New Guy abused the trust of Coworker to get out of an assignment that apparently wasn't to his liking.

Descriptions of New Guy has some spidey senses tingling. He has very limited knowledge of the field, as expected of an entry level person (we all start somewhere!), but appears to believe that which he doesn't understand is easy to accomplish. He's disparaged employees who have trained him to Coworker. And his attempt to reassign himself demonstrates less than straightforwardness in his dealings with others as his response to misleading Coworker was reportedly along the lines of caveat emptor.

Company reputation in this field depends on the honesty and transparency of employees in the way work is performed. Reputation plays a large role in how contracts are awarded. The perception of not being above board can lead to lost opportunities, and legal liability for actual dishonest conduct.

So far New Guy's direct manager is unaware of this incident. Team New Guy feels this should be treated as youthful hijinks and not mentioned unless something else happens. Team Play It Safer thinks it's a case where discreetly alerting someone better positioned to observe/monitor New Guy's workplace interactions is warranted. What do you think?

If it were just the attempting to reassign himself, I'd say that was quite naive and showed he doesn't understand how work usually works yet — but that he was corrected and hopefully understands going forward, and that this is within the general scope of "stupid stuff people do when they're brand new to working" but not highly alarming (just embarrassing). But combined with the other details you shared about him, it does paint an overall picture of someone who not only doesn't get it (which is fine and understandable at entry level) but is also a bit of a jerk (not fine, and not at any level but it’s especially ridiculous at entry level).

Either way, though, his manager needs to be told what happened — not in a "we're going to get New Guy in trouble" way, but in a "his manager needs to be aware of this in order to properly manage him" way. I'd be pretty annoyed if I were his manager and no one told me this happened.

2. Sleeping hours and quiet when sharing a hotel room

I'm in an industry where hotel room sharing is the norm. I'm writing to ask, what are best practices around behavior when sharing hotel rooms with a coworker? Some things seem obvious (change clothes in the restroom, don't use their belongings). I'm interested in norms around noise and sleeping hours. Some people prefer sleeping with the TV on or listening to music in the morning. I prefer quiet and actually can't sleep with either of those things happening.

I recently shared a room with a coworker (who is in general a great roommate and great person) who gets up to start getting ready at least an hour before I'm awake and plays music. He plays it at a respectful volume, but it's a small hotel room and I still can't sleep. He’s shared before that he really enjoys/needs sound throughout the day and (although I feel like this could be accomplished through headphones) I want him to get what he needs. The first question is: how do I handle this in the short term? The second question is: would it just be better for us not to room together in the future? Our team travels for work four to six times a year and I'm sure that there are others whose sleep schedule/noise preferences are more compatible with ours. If that's the case, should I talk to him, our office manager (who books rooms), or our manager, or some combination of those folks?

I'm not sure there's any such thing as playing music "at a respectful volume" when someone else is still asleep in your shared hotel room. And yes, he could wear headphones if he needs music at all times, even when you're sleeping. It's kind of you to want him to get what he needs, but when you share a room with someone, a need for sleep trumps a desire to enjoy music. That's especially true when the other person is a coworker and you're on a business trip, since there's such a high need there to respect boundaries and personal space.

Tell him that you appreciate him trying to keep the volume down but it wakes you up anyway, and ask that he use headphones until you're awake. Ask if that'll work for him or whether it would be better to find different roommates. If he doesn't agree to it, then, yes, talk to the person who books rooms and say you have incompatible schedules and would like to switch in the future.

3. Getting gender right when we've never met in person

My conundrum has to do with gender. I remotely connect with people all over the world for online events. We are given the connection through any number of means, from a coworker to LinkedIn to website chat. Sometimes we don’t know the gender of the person, even after speaking and emailing back and forth. This causes problems with pronouns and properly addressing someone. Think taking notes on conference calls that are sent out to all attendees: “Carol asked Cory when the proposal would be sent. Cory stated tomorrow. Carol thanked Cory, then asked him/her when he/she would need a response. Also, think in terms of conference call introductions: “Carol has been with Teapots Unlimited for 15 years. He has been Cory’s counterpart for five years.”

What is the best way to clarify this? Is there a polite way to ask if Carol is a Mr. or a Ms.? Since we aren’t perfect and won’t always get it correct, how do we handle it when we are wrong and use the wrong pronoun when directly addressing or referring to someone?

Do you have people register for these events in any way? If so, can you include a field for pronoun preference? There's a move toward explicitly asking people what pronouns they use, and while it’s not widespread yet, it's increasing and it would solve your problem. It’s true that there are still lots of places/fields where that would be considered an unusual thing to do, and where organizations would worry that it would read as an explicit stance on social justice issues that they don't want to take an explicit stance on. But in a context like yours, it makes such good sense that it would be silly not to do it.

In any case, if you do get it wrong, a quick "Sorry about that, thanks for the correction" is all you need, although you could add "one of the drawbacks of doing everything online!" if it makes things feel more comfortable.

But also, those notes you described are really, really detailed! Consider moving just to the upshot — so in your example, you'd just note, "Cory said the proposal would be sent tomorrow and needs a response by Wednesday" and get rid of all the back and forth. Notes aren't meant to be minute-by-minute accounts; they just need the upshot, and that will cut way down on your need for pronouns too.

4. Can I use a possible promotion to get a higher salary offer from a new job?

I’ve been working for an online retailer for over a year. After becoming burned out, I began looking for work at other retailers. I was recently offered a job at a different company making about a dollar more than I make now. But here’s the problem: I may be up for a promotion at my current company. This promotion would pay much more than the other company is offering me. Unfortunately, nothing is concrete because I’m competing with a lot of very talented people. Also, I’ve been passed over for promotions many times in the past year. Is it unprofessional to call the other company and let them know how much my promotion would be paying? Would this information convince then to offer me a higher salary? I’m excited to work for this new company, so I’d hate to turn it down just because I may or may not be offered more money at my current job.

Nope, don't do that! The promotion sounds like it's far from being a sure thing, so it's not going to be compelling to the other employer. (It's sort of like saying "I applied for a job that pays more" — they won't really care unless you actually get offered it.)

If your current company had already offered you the promotion, you could use that as part of salary negotiations with the new company, framing it as, "I'd love to accept. My current job just offered me a raise to $X — would you be able to meet that?" But you can’t use a promotion that’s just a maybe at this point.

5. Can we charge a new hire who flaked for the cost of her training?

We hired an employee who was being trained by the person who was leaving. We trained her for a week, then she didn't show up and had excuse after excuse for a week while we held her job. We now have no employee or anyone to train the new one. She showed up and wanted her check immediately. Is there anyway we can charge her for her free training and wasting our time along with the person’s salary we paid to train her?

Nope, you cannot. That would be illegal. You're required by law to pay her for the time she spent working for you, even though it was just training time. It’s incredibly annoying when something like this happens, but you're better off seeing the occasional flakey new hire as just part of the cost of doing business.

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