“my team keeps working unauthorized overtime, office lighting wars, and more” plus 3 more Ask a Manager

my team keeps working unauthorized overtime, office lighting wars, and more
what’s up with people responding to emails with a phone call?
what kind of loyalty do you owe your employer?
my coworker lied about having a terminal illness — and we donated money to her

my team keeps working unauthorized overtime, office lighting wars, and more

Posted: 24 Feb 2020 09:03 PM PST

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

1. My staff keeps working unauthorized overtime even though I told them to stop

In my line of work, I oversee all the staff I used to be "teammates" with. I understand this can be a hard transition, but it's been over a year and the staff are still having a hard time with this. That is not the question but I feel it's relevant. The bigger issue I'm having with some of them is the overtime. Our company strongly discourages overtime, because we are a nonprofit and don't have the money to pay out a ton of overtime. Therefore, ANY overtime has to be approved before it is taken. My staff know that if it is worked, legally it has to be paid and a few are taking advantage of this and not asking before using taking overtime, even though we've had the discussion several times. How do I get them to understand this isn't just a rule I've made up but a company policy?

It's a big deal that you've told them directly to stop doing this and they're doing it anyway. Really, that initial conversation should be all it takes — so since it's still happening, you need to take it very seriously and attach real consequences to it. The first consequence should be that if someone works unauthorized overtime, you require them work fewer hours the rest of the week so that they're not earning additional pay, even if it means sending them home. That might be enough to show you're serious (or at least that there's no point in what they're trying because they won't get paid more for it). But if it keeps happening, you need to escalate the consequences — the point of being willing to fire people who knowingly flout this rule.

If that sounds extreme, it’s not. Working unauthorized overtime after being told not to is the same as saying "I am going to take money from the organization that you haven't authorized" — and that's a huge issue, and, if it keeps happening after an initial warning, it’s serious enough to replace people over. That means you should loop in your boss now, because she needs to know this is happening and how you’re handling it.

It sounds like you think this is happening because your team doesn’t take you seriously as their boss. If so, you need to resolve that quickly too. You can't have people on your team who disregard you whenever they feel like it or you’ll have a toxic mess.

(One caveat here: It doesn't sound like it from your letter, but make sure people aren’t working the overtime because they're being pressured to do more work than they realistically can achieve in a 40-hour week. If that's what's behind this, your solution needs to tackle that at the root.)

2. Office lighting wars

We have a very large, open office. There is one light switch with three settings: off, half on, and completely on. In the mornings when I arrive at work, it’s set to half-on. Coincidentally, I sit right next to the switch, but I don’t like the idea of messing with it. There is one person in the office who turns the lights completely on, and those who sit around me hate it. People roll their eyes, scoff in annoyance, and one woman spoke up “did she just make a decision on behalf of everyone else?” When she doesn’t come in, I’m very much aware of it because people mention how nice the lighting is. I’ve even stuck a piece of paper over the light switch, but despite all of this the individual either doesn’t get it or doesn’t want to. Our company would have no problem reimbursing this person for a personal lamp to keep at their desk, so I’m not sure why that hasn’t been an option — but I don’t work on this person’s team and I don’t have a senior position. I don’t think this individual has a senior position, either.

I doubt that this is something I can go to my boss with, and I’m not sure if HR or an office admin would be the correct option, either. I’ve thought about putting up a poll to see if the majority of employees actually do want the lights completely on, but i) it’s time-consuming, and ii) it doesn’t guarantee a resolution (how do we enforce something like that even if we can confirm that most people want them half on?). I’ve considered flicking them back after they walk away, but knowing my luck I’d end up turning off the lights completely (it’s not an on/off toggle), and … it seems childish. Do you have any suggestions? This has been going on for months and my patience is going to slip one of these days.

Yeah, one person shouldn't be repeatedly choosing the lighting for an entire group without consulting anyone's preferences but her own.

Check with the people around you to confirm your sense of their preferences is correct. But assuming it is, the next time this coworker switches the lights fully on, why not say, "Oh, we actually keep those half-off on purpose" and then switch it back? Or you can just switch it back without explaining, but speaking up has a greater chance of solving the problem. Alternately, you can try a clearly worded sign (although that would be weird to do without the buy-in of others there, so definitely ensure that first).

3. My coworker blows off my work event invitations

My department has quarterly parties with dinner and drinks at local restaurants if we meet our performance goals for the previous three months. Attendance at these parties is not mandatory, but my manager does appreciate it. My manager likes my organizational skills and he asked me to plan these events. I like doing it and get a bonus for it.

Two weeks before the events, I email everyone with the times and dates, asking for a reply within seven days so I can give the restaurants a headcount. Almost everyone replies, with the exception of one woman. She and I do not like each other very much. She is very nice and outgoing to a few people in her office clique, but when I try to talk to her she is curt and dismissive. She gives one-word answers and won’t engage in conversation with me.

I do not care if she doesn’t like me, but I do care if she ignores my invitations to our office parties. It is rude and ungracious behavior. She has done this three times. I talked to my manager about this. He agrees she should reply but I don’t think he can make it mandatory for her to reply to me.

How should I handle this going forward? My wife says I should just stop inviting her, but I have a feeling the day I do, she will complain I am creating a hostile work environment by singling her out. I worry if my boss does not put a stop to this, her passive-aggression will only get worse.

You're taking this too personally. These are work events, not a personal party you're throwing at your house, and if she doesn't care to respond or attend, so be it. You’re right that it’s rude not to RSVP if requested to, and more so if she's doing it at you in some way — but ultimately it doesn't really matter. So she's rude and ungracious; you don't need to care or be invested in her in any way.

Don’t take your wife’s advice to stop inviting this coworker. These are work parties and you can't exclude someone on your team from an official work event. But when you ask for RSVPs, just ask people to let you know if they'll attend and say you'll assume people you don't hear from aren't coming — and then do indeed assume that. If she doesn't RVSP, figure she's not attending and be done with it.

4. New hire backed out right before starting

My clinic hired an advance practice nurse more than three months ago. She accepted the offer and was due to start work in a week. Today she emailed us to say she wants "to take her career in another direction." One week prior to start date and for us three full months when we could have been searching. Even worse, no phone call, no apology for wasting our time. Any advice on how to regroup and to lessen the likelihood of this happening again, other than baying at the moon and tearing my hair out?

It happens. If you hire enough people, eventually someone's going to back out of an offer they'd previously accepted; that's just how it goes. People get better offers, or change their minds, or their circumstances change. It's worth looking back at the hiring process to see if in retrospect you notice any signs you should have paid more attention to (so you can learn from them for the future), but sometimes this just happens.

That said, when you hire someone with a far-off start date, it's smart to keep in touch with them during that time. Not oppressive daily contact or anything, but checking in every few weeks, letting them know how excited you are to have them start, sending them an article that might interest them, sending benefits info, inviting them (without pressure) to events, etc. But even when you do that, sometimes someone will back out anyway.

It’s also worth reflecting on whether your work conditions might have played a role in her decision. Did she learn something after she’d accepted the offer that gave her pause? How are your Glassdoor reviews? What's your culture like? But if this was a one-time thing and not a regular occurrence, it's likely just one of those frustrating things that sometimes happen.

5. Can my past manager be a job reference if we're now close friends?

A former manager (from about three years ago) has since become a very good friend of mine. So good that she keeps my dog when I go out of town, I pick her daughter up from school sometimes, and we even went to the beach together last summer. She was very careful to keep our relationship professional while she was my manager, and even when I got a different manager but we still worked in the same building. But since I left that company, we’ve become very close.

Is it appropriate to use her as a professional reference, since she was my direct manager for several months and is super familiar with many aspects of my work? Or is it possible this crosses the line into a “friend reference,” since we’re now very close and her view of me professionally could be understandably skewed by that closeness?

Well … if she'd been your manager for a longer time, I say that it's not ideal but you could use her. Honestly, as a hiring manager, I'd want to know if the relationship has become a close friendship because that means the reference might be biased and she might not be fully up-front when talking about your weaker spots — but on your end of things, she was your manager and it's legit to use a recent manager as a reference. (An exception would be if you'd become romantically involved — that's something you'd be expected to disclose.)

However, since she only managed you for a few months, I'm skeptical about the value of the reference, totally aside from this issue! A good reference checker will ask how long she managed you, and a few months is so short that she barely qualifies as a manager reference anyway. That short time frame puts her much more solidly in the category of "friend reference" than "manager reference." Given that, if you have other good options for references — people who managed you longer and also like your work — I'd use them instead.

A few years back, I had a coworker, "Jane,” who told everyone she was suffering from a terminal illness. She missed a lot of work, but HR and the managers were really kind to her in making sure they accommodated her needs (she was getting treatments and also experienced pain/fatigue from her illness, so usually was working two days a week on average).

One of the office support staff set up a GoFundMe account to help Jane’s family afford a trip abroad, because that was something she had expressed a desire to do before she died. We all contributed large sums. I had left the office by this time, but am still close with some of the folks there, and even those of us who weren’t working there gave to this cause. It was fully funded (upwards of $15,000), and the money was used for the intended vacation.

Jane later left the job because she was having too much trouble with the workload she still had. Understandable with the illness she had told us about.

A couple months after she left, a friend of hers called the office and said she was calling to ask if Jane had contacted them. According to the caller, Jane was never really sick, at least not the way she told everyone. She had been going through some sort of mental health issue and had consciously lied to everyone about what was going on. She had never gotten the treatments she claimed to be going through and had never suffered the symptoms she claimed to have. She had purposefully written blog posts about dealing with her terminal illness she never had, and had taken her family on a trip abroad using money that we had all donated with the intent of helping a friend/coworker to have a memorable final trip with family. This friend of hers was a sponsor of sorts trying to help get her back on track by apologizing to people she had wronged.

This whole thing has made me skeptical of others, which is not in my nature, and makes me feel horrible. I know others in the office have felt the same way, and that at least one person feels as though their faith has been shaken (they shared a religious affiliation with the “sick” coworker).

Jane has applied to jobs in the area and is using the HR person from my former office as a reference, which feels wrong. I keep seeing this person pop up as a suggested LinkedIn or Facebook connection, and every time I just want to send her a message and ask how her trip was and if she intends to pay us back (some of us, even at low wages, gave upwards of $500, and I know that the boss gave somewhere around $1,000). Should I reach out and let her know how her actions affected those around her? Or should I let it go and accept we got scammed?

Well, I think you've got to be careful about what you know for sure here.

You know someone in this situation lied. It sounds like it's Jane, but there's at least an outside chance that it could be the person who called you. That seems unlikely — what would she have to gain? — but I'd be wary of being absolutely certain Jane lied based on the word of one person you don't know.

Rather than a "coworker definitely lied about being sick" situation, I think you have an "ugh, we now have sickening information that, if true, is deeply upsetting" situation.

Is there someone in the office who could contact Jane to express concern? Someone who was close to her, or perhaps the HR person she's still in touch with about references? That person could tell her about the phone call to the office, say people are concerned, and ask what's going on. On the off chance that the caller wasn't legit, Jane needs to know someone is muddying her name like that. And on the better chance the caller was legit, it's a way to broach the conversation with Jane and ask what's going on. (It's also completely reasonable for the HR person to need more information before she can continue acting as a reference.)

Of course, there's no guarantee you're going to get the truth from Jane. The caller could have been legit and Jane might still insist they aren't.

Beyond that … I understand the impulse to contact her and ask if she intends to pay you back. If you find out for sure that she lied, you certainly can. I doubt you're going to see that money, but you're certainly entitled to take a stand over it (including reporting her for fraud if you choose to). You can also file for a refund with GoFundMe, which now says it will refund donations obtained under false pretenses.

I'm sorry this happened.

Rapitful Shqip

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