“my coworker is a blood drive bully, non-monetary perks, and more” plus 3 more Ask a Manager

my coworker is a blood drive bully, non-monetary perks, and more
I’m caught in the middle of an investigation at work
I don’t have any work to do at my new job
how do I stop my desk from looking like a tornado hit it?

my coworker is a blood drive bully, non-monetary perks, and more

Posted: 17 Jan 2019 09:03 PM PST

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

1. My coworker is a blood drive bully

I'm the newest and youngest employee at a small office that's the perfect place to start a career in my industry. I love the work, and I like my coworkers. The problem is "Alice." She's the long-time office admin, a very sweet and upbeat woman in her mid-50s. She's involved in all kinds of charities and volunteer work, all for causes I support. She never solicits donations (it's against company policy); she doesn't badger people to join her groups though she's always delighted when someone expresses an interest.

One of her causes is the Red Cross. Last week they launched a blood drive in our neighborhood—actually there's a "bloodmobile" parked on our block. Alice enthusiastically announced the drive, urging everyone to donate. You get a sticker when you do, and she wears hers prominently every day. She also keeps tabs on who's gotten a sticker and who hasn't; over the last few days she has affectionately chided any un-stickered employees, usually in the morning when we're all getting coffee, and once at a staff meeting. (Also the office has an open floor plan.)

I fully support the Red Cross and their work. But I am a bisexual man, and not exactly celibate. The FDA still has a ban on donations from any man who's had sex with another guy in the past year. I'm out to most people in my life, and not keeping it a secret from anyone else. But it hasn't been an easy process and to be honest I'm still coming to terms with my identity, including how or when to come out (I'm not in a relationship and most people assume I'm straight). The one thing I'm sure of is that I'm done lying.

So whenever I see Alice coming at me with her big smile and her sticker I break into a cold sweat. I've dodged the question so far, sort of walking a thin line between the truth and the whole truth. It just feels like if I laid it out for her I might as well be making an announcement to the entire office: "Attention everyone! I have sex with men!" I'm not ready for that.

What's worse is that our HR department is basically one guy: a gay man who casually strolled in with his "I donated" sticker the second day of the drive. I don't know if he really did or what, and I'm truly not judging him. But it makes me feel even more self-conscious about coming out in this way, much less talking to him about it.

How should I handle this? The blood drive's almost over; can I just wait it out? Or am I being a coward and a hypocrite by not explaining my situation to Alice? I feel so embarrassed and awkward about the whole thing, I've kind of lost perspective. But I can't bring myself to wear that damned sticker if I didn't earn it, and as much as I wish I could, I can't donate without being dishonest. (I should add that I'm fully confident about my negative HIV status, so this really is just about being bisexual.)

You are 100% entitled not to explain the situation to Alice. You are being neither a coward or a hypocrite. People aren't entitled to information you didn't intend to share with them just because they're pushy.

And Alice is being pushy. Yes, blood donation is a good cause, but people have all kinds of personal reasons for not wanting or being able to donate blood, and she should be more thoughtful about that.

If you just want to wait it out, that is completely fine! There is no shame in taking the path of least resistance here.

But if you wanted to say something to Alice, you could say, "You know, some people have medical or other reasons they can't donate blood, and might not want to announce those reasons at work." Ideally you'd add, "This kind of pressure isn't cool when you consider that," but you can leave that off if you want. (But do know that's true, and it's not just men who've had recent sex with men — you can't donate blood if you're on certain medications, including antibiotics, or have certain types of cancer, or ever tested positive for Hepatitis C, or a bunch of other reasons.)

And if you want to, you can also point out the same thing to your HR guy — as in, "I'm concerned about how much pressure Alice is generating around the blood drive. I'm all for giving blood, but given the whole range of medical and other reasons some people aren't allowed to, I worry she's inadvertently pressuring people to reveal personal medical info to her because she's not taking no for an answer." This framing is "I'm concerned for the office as a whole" and "this is a landmine for the company," not "Alice is making me uncomfortable. (Although the latter would be fine to say too! It just sounds like you'd prefer not to.)

But you don't have to do any of that if you don't want to. It is perfectly fine to just wait this out. Hell, it's fine to lie to/mislead Alice ("yep, I'm good") if she continues being so pushy. You have zero obligation to share anything you don't want to share.

2. Should I tell my employee to stop addressing people by their first names?

I am in a position where I have my own direct employee for the first time. My employee is wonderful and very capable.

My personal philosophy when dealing with other coworkers has always been to treat them with the most respect I can, even going overboard. Recently, my employee sent an email out to a different department attempting to correct their mistake (might not have been a mistake), and addressed it to them by using only their first name.

I wanted to get your opinion on this. Am I just super sensitive, or should I address this since she's representing my team when she emails other departments?

It's really, really, really normal to address coworkers by their first names, even ones you haven’t met yet! There are some organizations in the U.S. where that’s not the case, but they're the exception rather than the norm.

The question here is, what’s the culture around names in your office? If most people use first names, you shouldn’t direct your employee to do otherwise, or it risks making her come across as young, naive, and/or out of step with your office culture. If the culture is that people don't use first names, then yes, cueing her into that would be both a kindness to her and something you have standing to do as her manager.

But going overboard on respect isn't always a good thing. Depending on exactly what you mean by that, it can actually create barriers between you and others. (Calling someone Ms. Warbleworth when everyone else calls her Valentina is a good example of that.)

3. What kind of non-monetary perks can I ask for?

My yearly review is coming up, but my boss gave a “sneak peek” in one of our weekly check-ins, and I knocked it out of the park. Also, the end of January will be my 15-year anniversary with the organization.

Unfortunately, we’re a nonprofit and we had significant funding cuts this year, so raises are off the table until next year at the earliest. Boss has been a really strong advocate for me and my work since I moved to this position in 2011. In our check-in, she expressed that I’m a valuable, essential employee here, and wanted me to think before my review about whether there were any non-monetary rewards they could give me (not completely in lieu of a raise–that’s still in the works for next year–but in lieu of being able to give one right now). The problem is … I’ve never worked anywhere else (besides retail jobs in high school), so I have no clue what to ask for!

I might ask about more vacation, but I currently get four weeks and rarely use all of it (especially because we also get a lot of paid holidays). A friend also suggested asking for the flexibility to work from home sometimes, which might be nice occasionally, but I wouldn’t do it often because a lot of my work requires two monitors (which I don’t have at home). Is there anything else I should consider? Boss said she would also think about it before we meet to see if she had any suggestions.

(Just in case it’s relevant: I love my job, and I wouldn’t be looking to leave even if they weren’t offering this, but I’m certainly not going to refuse!)

More time off is the big one, and I want to strongly urge you to start using more of the time off you already get. Take a week off and stay at home and lounge and read! Take a bunch of Fridays off. You won't regret it.

Beyond that … Is there a class you want to take? A better title? A certain type of project you want to take on?

Also, is there anything at work that frustrates you and makes your job harder or lowers your quality of life? This may be the time you can say, "Could I move into an office that's not right next to the bathroom?" or "I would love not to be in charge of the interns this summer so that I have more time to focus on XYZ."

4. What to do when I'm told someone will contact me to schedule an interview, but they don’t

A couple times this past year when applying for a job, I’ve been told “my assistant / associate / whoever will reach out tomorrow to set up the time for the interview,” only to have them not reach out. It happened twice with two different companies, and both times after a couple days went by I emailed the original person and said something like, “I’m eager to set up an interview, and I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss so-and-so’s email."

In a situation like that where they’ve been clear they want to set up an interview but it is someone else’s job to do the actual scheduling, should I refrain from reaching out when the timeline they give doesn’t happen? I know it takes longer for the interviewer to set things up but it seems strange that it takes a couple of days to even get the initial (clearly form) email about setting up a time.

Give it a few days past the day they told you to expect to hear before following up. So if they tell you on Monday that the assistant will contact you on Tuesday, I'd wait until Thursday at the earliest to check back. The assistant (or whoever) could be out on Tuesday, or just juggling higher priorities. But it's fine to check back in a few days after the timeline you were given has passed.

This is not the first time that this has happened to me and I can’t help but feel icky about it and I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing. I have been in a new job that I love for about two months. Recently two coworkers (not people on my team or that I work with regularly, let’s call them Frank and Joe) got into a verbal altercation in the office. Frank was upset with Joe for “touching his work.” Joe was trying to explain why he did what he did, and Frank just kept cutting him off, getting pretty animated in the process. At one point Joe looks him dead in the eye and says, "Are you high right now?” Frank totally loses it then, says a few things along the lines of “I can’t f***ing believe you said that to me” and so forth. I sit one set of cubicles away from them, so I heard a large portion of what happened.

Twice in past jobs I have been pulled in as a “witness” to things that have happened both in and out of the workplace, and in both cases at least one person in question lost their job. One was a friend and one was someone who the entire team loved and I desperately tried to keep it hidden that I had given testimony that contributed to the firing because they were so upset. I want to stay out of it, but the way I handled it in those cases was to try to dispassionately give the facts of what I saw and leave it at that. I’m not going to lie to my employer and/or been seen as uncooperative when it comes to something they are obviously taking very seriously.

This week I got called into a meeting to give my “testimony” of what happened because they knew I witnessed all this. I did the same thing and tried to just give the facts, but also tried to add in that I thought both people in the incident were good people and hard workers, and while I recognized that their behavior was unprofessional, it was just an unfortunate incident around the holidays when people be crazy. Then they started asking questions about bullying behavior, whether comments were made about age and appearance, things like that. No! “Bullying” in particular is a serious buzzword and despite being new I have never seen anything indicating that this type of behavior is normal for them or that either would be considered a bully. I don’t think ageism or anything like that was a part of it. They even asked if I felt unsafe or felt that it might turn violent! No. Seriously, I described it as a “nerd fight” to my boyfriend.

I am scared that one or both will be disciplined or lose their job and I will be a contributing factor, once again, and my new coworkers will know it. I know it’s not my fault that they acted like children, and I can’t think of any “better” way to handle it when my employer asks me to take part in an investigation, but I also just feel scummy about the whole idea of potentially impacting someone’s livelihood.

I guess my question is whether or not there is actually a better way to handle this type of thing. At one point in the altercation, someone else stepped in and told them to cut it out, and then another coworker tried to facilitate a civil conversation, which did seem to take place (and I included that in my testimony). I hate being in the middle and I don’t want my new coworkers to think I’m a tattletale or blame me if one of these well liked people gets disciplined. Could I have refused to participate in the investigation without looking bad to my bosses? If I had known them better or had been here longer, I perhaps I would have stepped in during the incident. Perhaps I should have despite my status here to try and head this whole thing off?

The thing is, if someone gets disciplined or even fired over something you witnessed, you're not the one who caused that to happen — they are. And any reasonable coworkers will know that.

And really, if Frank or Joe gets fired for what you saw, it's probably because they've done this before and it's part of a pattern of behavior. Otherwise that type of altercation isn't likely to rise to the level of firing anyone. A serious talk, yes. Firing, no. (Again, unless it's part of.an ongoing pattern.)

That doesn't mean it's not awkward, though. It is.

The best way to handle it is exactly what you've been doing — be as objective as possible, just recount the facts, and cultivate a tone (with HR and with your coworkers) of "I have no stake in this.” But refusing to participate isn’t really an option; doing that would indeed be a huge red flag to your employer and will come across as “I’m not willing to make myself even slightly uncomfortable for a larger good” or as if you see management as the enemy (and that you see it so much that way that you think you can be flagrant about it).

Keep in mind that employers rely on people being willing to share what they witnessed in order to deal effectively with serious problems. It's rare for someone to be called in as a witness over something truly minor. Often if you're being asked to share what you saw, it's because the issues touch on bullying, harassment, discrimination, or other serious issues that we want employers to address. (Sometimes they investigate and find those things weren't happening, of course! But it's important that they ask the questions when they see something troubling. When companies don't do that, you end up with really terrible problems that no one is addressing.)

If we want employers to take problems seriously, people need to be willing to participate in investigations of those problems. Otherwise employers would only be able to address things they see or hear personally, and that's not good for anyone.

Of course, the calculation changes if you're working somewhere known to be dysfunctional in this regard — somewhere with a track record of twisting people's words, or shooting the messenger, or violating confidentiality, or protecting people who shouldn't be protected, or targeting people who don't deserve it. But otherwise — give them the help they need to make your workplace a decent place to be.

As for whether you should have stepped in during the altercation between Frank and Joe: No. You’re new, and you don’t know either of them well. You don’t know if either of them has a history of anger or irrational grudges. You aren’t obligated to insert yourself into the middle of two adults acting like children.

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