“employee quit and deleted his files, old job still contacts me daily, and more” plus 3 more Ask a Manager

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employee quit and deleted his files, old job still contacts me daily, and more

Posted: 27 Feb 2019 09:03 PM PST

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

1. Employee quit and deleted his computer files

One of our employees just quit without notice and left us in a bind. He is part of a team that works collaboratively, but recently took on a new project and hadn’t gotten to cross-train any of his colleagues before he left.

He came in after a vacation, turned in his badge and key, and resigned on the spot. He didn’t give any reason for quitting. Recently there were concerns of him possibly bullying a new colleague he was training, and he was skipping supervisions and making rude comments to his supervisor (which we addressed with direct feedback). It’s probably for the best that he decided to move on.

Here’s the problem — he was the lead on implementing a new company-wide data tracking system. He attended training, which we paid for, and was responsible for learning how to use all of the system’s features and problem solving issues that came up. The training was expensive, which is why we only sent one employee. We just went live with this new system a few months ago.

This employee was supposed to cross-train his colleagues on the back end features of the system in the next few weeks. After he resigned, his supervisor discovered he had taken all of his training notes and deleted all of his files on his computer. We gave the computer to our IT consultant, but nothing can be recovered.

Our CEO wants the employee to return copies of any notes or files he might still have. I’m not sure how much I can push back if he refuses, or even what to say. Obviously he doesn’t care about a reference from anyone here, and it’s not like we can hold his last paycheck or enforce any real consequences. Any advice?

Actually, you have some legal recourse here: the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act makes it illegal for an employee to knowingly damage electronic files, which includes permanently deleting them without authorization, and your employee could face criminal and civil liability if you chose to pursue that. If you did want to pursue it, a lawyer could likely help you negotiate the return of the raining notes as a way to settle it. Of course, that assumes he still has those notes, which he may not.

That's what you're legally entitled to do. But it may not be worth the hassle — in particular because his notes, like many people's may suck, or may be fairly useless without the broader knowledge from the training to go along with them. You could go through all that and end up with notes that are mostly useless. But if you do want to pursue it, I'd talk with a lawyer about exactly how to do it.

2. My old job still contacts me daily, almost a year after I left

In 2018 I left an unsavory work environment. I was a subject matter expert and office administrator for a small company of about 250. My department of 15 couldn’t function without me and I don’t mean that with pride. I worked there four years and no matter how many systems I had in place, training manuals, or step by step instructions or in-person trainings I did, I would get calls and texts all hours of the day and night, weekends, and during vacations asking how to do the most basic of our functions by industry professionals who had degrees and should have known how to do it. I would also get calls and texts like I was the office mom: “Where’s the batteries for this?” “How do I fix the coffee pot?”

I left in May of 2018 and started my own business but I am still DAILY getting calls, texts, and emails about how to do something from my former coworkers. Yesterday I got an email asking me who to call for copier repairs in an office I haven’t worked at in 10 months.

The first time they texted me asking for something, I made a joke about my hourly going rate for consultation and reminded them I no longer work there. It was met with pushback and more questions. I emailed my former boss and asked him to please quell the contact and he responded that it’s not his responsibility. I don’t respond to any of the contact but I have spent 35 hours this past year weeding their requests out of my personal email, my business email, my business social media pages, and off my home and business voicemails. I’m established with my business and I shouldn’t have to change my contact information.

Can I bill my former employer for this time? This is beyond insane.

Daily calls after nearly a year? This is indeed beyond insane.

But you can't invoice them. You can't send a bill for a service that someone never agreed to pay for. I mean, you can try it, and it's possible that it'll make your point (but it's unlikely that they'll pay it), but with a boss who says it's "not his responsibility," I'm skeptical that it'll move him to action. (You also can't really invoice people for contacting you if you're not responding.)

Are you answering any of their questions when they contact you? If you are, even if it's just a few, you're reinforcing the behavior. I realize you said you're not — but since they're still contacting you this much so long after you left, I wonder if you're doing it occasionally? If you are, effective immediately, answer nothing.

Beyond that, can you block their number(s) and set any emails from their domain to get straight to your trash so you never see them? (Or if you prefer, to a folder that you check once a month to be sure you don't miss anything you'd want to see?) You should be able to block them on most social media too.

You can also send a formal, certified letter telling them they need to cease contact — you could even have a lawyer do that for you — but I suspect aggressive blocking will be your most effective option.

3. Janitor calls me pet names

I am a young woman in my late 20s who works at a large government agency as a scientist. One of the janitors in an older man who is very friendly and chatty, but calls me “sugar” and "baby” which I find annoying and unprofessional. At first, I have ignored it because I don’t think it’s worth my time to correct. However, it’s starting to get on my nerves, and I think I should speak up. Do you have any recommendations of what I should say when he calls me “baby” or “sugar” to make the point without coming off too cold.

"I prefer Lavinia, thank you!"

"Would you mind just calling me Lavinia?”

"Actually, it's Lavinia."

4. My friend's resume says she's a "keen walker”

My friend (who is from the UK, where your resume should be two pages long) has a resume that is four pages long and includes phrases like “I’m a keen walker” and is … not great. I’ve helped her revamp her resume, but she’s been “applying” for two years. I’m trying to assist, but she has like no skills and doesn’t seem to want to gain any. She also has a master’s in creative writing, but refuses to do non-fiction writing.

I’m guessing this is kinda a situation where I just have to let go right? “You can lead the horse to water but you can’t make it drink"?

Correct.

5. Should my resume note I was laid off from some jobs?

I’ve got a question about resumes for which I’ve been finding conflicting advice. When you’ve been laid off from a position, should you specify that on your resume? Some columnists recommend to do that yet others advise specifying that only in the cover letter. What if the ATS won’t allow cover letters?

I’ve been laid off three times but only once from a short-term job (14 months). The others were five- or six-year jobs. Should I be explaining this or not and how?

Nope, in most cases your resume should not include reasons why you left the job. That's definitely true in your case, where all but one of the stays are long enough that they won't raise questions. (For the one shorter-term stay, as long as it's not a pattern of short-term stays, it's not going to raise the sort of red flag that would get you rejected. If anyone's curious, they'll ask in the interview, but it's not the sort of thing that they'd not call you over.) In your case, you also don't need to address it in your cover letter, for the same reason.

If you did have a pattern of short-term stays, in some cases it would help to include some context about why you moved on (moved, laid off, contract ended, etc.). But it’s not really convention to it that way, and I'd only do it if you had a really unusual looking resume that you needed to explain.

One of my coworkers usually takes care of my pets when I go away, but this time he could only do it for part of my vacation. He was going to do it for the whole week but then my boss sent him to out of town to do a course for something he needs him to learn how to do. The boss was aware that Bob was looking after my pets and offered to do the three days that Bob couldn’t do. I figured hey, my boss has pets and he’s diabetic (like my big dog is), what’s the worst that could happen? Plus he did the dog’s insulin shot in front of us the first time and had no problem with it, so we had no reason to think he would screw up so badly.

Well, we left him VERY clear feeding instructions with each pet’s name and physical description and we put each of their names on the bags of food to avoid confusion. For example, on the instructions we wrote “Bishop (black cat) – keep him closed in spare bedroom with litter box. Feed him 1 scoop of dry hypothyroid cat food and 1 forkful of wet hypothyroid food twice daily. Don’t let him out of the spare room, as he could get sick if he gets into the other cat’s food.”

Well, we come home, and instead find that our small dog Athena was the one closed in the spare bedroom. She was in there without water and without pee pads so there was dried up dog piss everywhere. We left the litter box in there too so he really had his head up his ass on this one. None of the other animals had water in their dishes either and we filled up each dish three times within half an hour of getting home, so they were clearly dehydrated. Then I went into our bedroom for a minute, where our cat Jane eats, and found Bishop’s food there. Bishop also now has a HUGE red mark on his face, which I’m thinking might be the result of an allergic reaction to getting fed the wrong food for three days. Literally the only thing my boss seems to have gotten right was the insulin shot for the big dog, but we are keeping a super close eye on all four pets right now.

I have to see my boss tomorrow and I really don’t know how I’m going to react when I see him. Please help!

Oh no, this is awful. This is every pet owner's nightmare about pet sitters.

This is also why it is really, really tricky to cross streams at work and hire a colleague — and especially your boss — to take care of your pets (or kids, or anything else important to you). If something goes wrong, it's tough to avoid having it negatively affect working relationships that you need to stay harmonious.

You can't explode at your boss, as much as I'm sure you'd like to (and as much as I'd like to on your behalf). But you can ask him about what happened in a tone of Great Concern. You can say in a very serious, very concerned voice, "Do you know what happened while we were gone? We came back to the dog shut up in the bedroom instead of the cat and no one had no one had water."

Phrasing this as "do you know what happened?" lets you start off without being instantly accusatory. And who knows, maybe there's more to this … like maybe he was waylaid with a horrible stomach flu and for the last scheduled visit he sent his seemingly responsible spouse in his place and had no idea she'd messed everything up, or who knows what.

Also, in this language, I've just stuck to the most egregious parts rather than reciting the full litany of problems. I've gone back and forth on whether that's the way to go, but ultimately I think it comes down to what outcomes you do and don't want from this conversation: You do want your boss to know that there were serious problems (because his being your boss doesn't require you to pretend this didn't happen, and if nothing else, he needs to know that his pet-sitting skills are terrible), but you don't want to cause so much tension between you that it causes problems for you at work (like your boss feeling so awkward around you that you miss out on professional opportunities).

That doesn't mean that you can't share more details as the conversation progresses. But I'd start here and see how it goes.

The other thing is, you're obviously never going to rely on your boss for anything like this ever again. Because of that, you don't need to cover every detail with him of how he messed up. It's enough to let him know that things really didn't go well, and leave it there. You don’t actually need him to understand each individual piece of how he let you and your animals down, when there are this many. (That's not to say there wouldn't be value in that. But it's trumped by the work considerations.)

And to be clear, this sucks. You should be able to show that you're really upset about this without having to worry about it affecting you professionally. But this is the exact reason why it's dangerous to hire a coworker, and especially your boss, for this kind of job — because if something goes wrong, you will need to consider a whole bunch of other factors in how you respond.

I’m glad you came home when you did and that your animals sound like they’ll be okay.

P.S. I am a huge fan of setting up indoor cameras when we travel. We do it mainly because I’m neurotic and have a much better time on trips when I can periodically check and see that the cats are fine, but it’s also great for peace of mind when you can see that the sitter has come and has done what they’re supposed to do.

Rapitful Shqip

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