employee insists at leaving at 5 on the dot every day, coworker is on a crusade about keeping the kitchen clean, and more

I’m off today. Here are some past letters that I’m making new again, rather than leaving them to wilt in the archives.

1. My employee insists at leaving at 5 on the dot every day — and is missing deadlines

I manage a large team with a heavy workload. Most of the team members are hard working, dedicated, and open to putting in late hours (when needed) to compete tasks.

There is however one employee who leaves at 5 p.m. on the dot regardless of whether or not the job is competed. The entire team is on salary, so it’s not about the hours but about the work.

I constantly hear “I’m so busy,” yet the employee never stays late to catch up or complete the work. I’m constantly pushing back deadlines because the work doesn’t get done. I look up at 5 p.m. and she’s gone. When asked why projects aren’t completed, the reply is “I had a lot to do.” This is true but sometimes I wish I could just tell her to put in a few more hours to catch up and get the work done.

You can tell her that! If these are salaried, exempt jobs, then it’s reasonable and normal that sometimes she might need to put in a bit more work to get things done. If that were happening all the time, I’d tell you that you needed to revisit your expectations and people’s workloads. But if it’s just occasional, this is a reasonable thing to expect.

If she’s behind on her work, you absolutely can say something like, “You’ve been missing a lot of deadlines and that can’t continue. That may mean that you sometimes need to work a little longer to ensure your work gets finished. This isn’t a job where you can expect to always work precisely 40 hours. The expectation is that you’ll put in extra time if it’s needed.”

If she reacts as if you’re telling her that she’ll never have an evening free again, then say, “I don’t expect you to work late every evening, but right now you’re working exactly 9-5 every day, and that’s not working because you’re missing deadlines. I need you to put in the time that it takes to get work done without missing deadlines. If you do that and it turns out that the time required is excessive, we can certainly revisit your workload at that point — but that’s not where we are now.”

And you don’t have to push back deadlines the way you’ve been doing — if they’re important, you can hold firm and say, “This does need to be turned in by tomorrow.” And you probably need to address it as a performance problem if deadlines are still missed.

– 2018

2. My coworker is on an aggressive crusade about keeping the kitchen clean

So a few weeks ago a lady who works on my floor started a break room crusade — passive-aggressive notes on the fridge and microwave, aggressively pursuing people who left things out, etc. I didn’t think much of it because I’m generally conscientious about cleaning up after myself and I never thought the break room got that messy anyway.

I’m one of the only people who sometimes uses reusable dishes in the break room. I would always make sure to wash the dishes I used and stack them neatly on the counter to dry. Admittedly, sometimes when I knew I’d be using the same dishes the next day, I’d leave them out until then. After this lady’s crusade began, she came into my office a couple times to ask me to dry and put the dishes away, which I did. Kind of nitpicky, but not a big deal, or so I thought.

Last week, she emailed my supervisor, asking him to do something about my horrible messiness, saying that I was creating an unsanitary environment, not respecting the space that belongs to everyone, and generally making it seem like I was regularly leaving huge messes in the break room. My supervisor forwarded me her email, adding that he expected me to fix the problem because it would be bad news if he had to escalate it to the department head.

I was really surprised and hurt by this. I don’t feel like it was at all necessary to involve my supervisor over something so banal, especially before actually having a conversation with me about the conflict. Now I feel like my relationship with my supervisor has taken a hit and I honestly feel a little terrorized. I’d like to speak with my supervisor to set the record straight, but I’m genuinely afraid that doing so will have negative repercussions for my job. Any advice on how to approach this new, dumb workplace dynamic?

Your manager handled that really oddly. This would be a bizarre thing for him to escalate to your department head and would likely make him look bad if he did, unless your department head loves getting involved in petty drama. That said, I’d just email back and say: “Hmmm, this is strange because I’m vigilant about cleaning up after myself in there. I’ll talk to Jane and find out what the issue is, and will resolve it directly with her.”

But then … I’d just stop leaving your dishes on the counter in the break room. Your coworker sounds like she’s gone off the deep end with her crusade, but it’s true that it’s mildly rude to leave your stuff on the counter of a shared kitchen since other people might want to use the space for preparing food.

– 2017

3. Should I tell my boss about a big screw-up that turned out okay?

I am not a perfect, rock-star employee, in large part because of ADHD that I didn’t get diagnosed until recently, but I am generally responsible and conscientious and always trying to humbly self-evaluate and improve. If we were assigning grades, I’d probably give myself a solid B-plus. I give this context because I can’t say that I have an immaculate track record, but neither am I a dumpster fire.

That said, this week I made one of the most serious mistakes of my professional life. I was packaging up important submittal materials for delivery to a prospective client. When I asked our administrative assistant to create an overnight shipping label, I checked the deadline, for some reason did not see a particular time specified, and requested delivery by noon.

However, in the morning, I realized that our department calendar said there was an 11 a.m. deadline. How I had missed this, I honestly don’t know. I immediately went into crisis resolution mode and tried to figure out a plan B. I asked the admin for the package tracking number, and it turns out the only before-noon delivery option was 10:30 a.m. anyway, so I got extremely lucky. The package was delivered with plenty of time to spare.

I’m wondering, though, if I should tell my boss about the disaster that almost happened. If the package hadn’t been delivered in time it might have cost us a high-value contract. I believe in transparency and accountability, but because this isn’t my only mistake (even though none of my others have been anywhere near as significant), I’m worried that I could end up on thin ice. Would it be dishonest not to out myself?

I don’t think you’re ethically obligated to say “I almost messed something up but it turned out to be fine.”

There are some situations where you’d have to do that — ones where there still might be consequences that your manager needs to know about. For example, if you upset a client but then were able to smooth it over, in many cases you’d still have a professional obligation to let your boss know what happened, because it could be relevant context for her to have (in case the client seems frustrated later, or is extra upset the next time something goes wrong, or so forth). But the result of your mistake here was … the package still arrived on time.

I do think, though, that you’re obligated to take this as a flag that you almost messed up something huge and need to pay more attention/review materials more closely/double-check for deadlines. If you do that, you’re holding yourself accountable.

– 2019

4. Can I ask for a bonus when I’m resigning after being underpaid for two years?

In 2016, I took on a management position in a company I had been interning at for six months. I was pretty desperate to find a job, as I was about to lose my insurance, and really struggling financially. They offered me the job, but really lowballed me, and I admittedly made a mistake by not researching salary range for the position. I was living below the poverty line at the time, and what they offered me sounded better than nothing, I loved the nonprofit, and I really wanted to move out of the service industry now that I was graduating college.

I realized pretty quickly that I was being underpaid by about $20K a year, according to market rate, and $25K less than my predecessor. I expressed to my boss that it wasn’t in my budget to continue working for my current salary, and received a 3% cost of living increase at my six-month review.

My boss was then fired, and pretty quickly after that my supervisor left, leaving me doing the three jobs for nine months in the interim. I received excellent feedback from our board, kept our fundraising numbers where they should be, and was repeatedly told I was “holding the place together.”

Our new executive director started in the new year, and to give them credit, they gave me a $20K raise almost immediately. However, at this point I was done with the exhaustion of working at this place and had been looking for new work for a while. I also began to feel that my current field is not right for me. I finally found a job that I think is going to be a great change for me, and I am leaving in a few months when the position opens. I gave my job plenty of notice and have agreed to train my replacement.

They just released my replacement’s salary range, and it’s $20K over what I am being paid now (that is, $20K over my current wage, which I have only had for two months, and $40K over what I was being paid for the first year and a half of my employment). I am furious. I feel abused and used by this organization. They hired me in as naive but very capable, and I held things together in their time of crisis, and I got into about $2K of debt while working here because I had to start buying groceries on credit (I live in a very expensive city). Is there a case I can make for some kind of parting bonus? We are a small organization and we don’t have HR.

It’s very unlikely. Bonuses are generally used as a way to retain good employees. Because you’re leaving, they have no incentive to give you a bonus on your way out.

It’s also possible that they’re looking to hire someone more experienced than you were. You noted that the market rate was $20K over what you were first being paid, and so the $20K raise you got presumably brought you up to market level. If they’re now offering an additional $20K over market rate, it’s very possible that they’re looking for someone with more experience or expertise (especially since you note that you were right out of college when you started, and especially if this role is also going to cover some of your former boss’s and former supervisor’s work). If that’s the case, then you might be comparing apples and oranges.

All that said, if you’re going above and beyond to help in the transition in ways that are inconveniencing you — like working longer hours or staying on longer than you otherwise would to help train your replacement or being available for questions after you leave — then now we have incentive for them to give you a bonus in exchange for that work. You can try to negotiate that! But otherwise, you can’t really expect them to give you more money as you’re leaving because you’re unhappy about the salary that you had agreed to previously.

– 2018

5. HR manager recommended a hotel bar to me

Is it okay for a HR manager to tell an employee via email, work email, that the hotel they recommend for employee to stay at for a business conference for company has a bar that is really good and put LOL in the email too?

Sure. HR people are humans too. They’re not advocating you get trashed and pass out in the hotel hallway; they’re telling you there’s a good bar there, which is a perfectly fine bit of information for one adult to share with another adult. It’s a detail about the hotel, which can you take or leave as you see fit, just like if they mentioned there was a good gym there or great room service.

– 2017

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