employee keeps leaving a mess in the bathroom, I’m doing higher level work but can’t get promoted, and more

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

1. How to talk to an employee who keeps leaving a mess in the bathroom

I’m not really sure how to handle a complaint from a worker. We have a new hire (two months) whose role is janitorial. He came to me today and asked if there’s anything I can do about another coworker who is, apparently, leaving bio-waste on the toilet seat every time he uses it. We only have one male employee (other than the janitor himself) and the mess is in the men’s bathroom, so the janitor is sure that it is him. Notably this is a public building so it could be a member of the public and not an employee, but the janitor says it’s every day, so likely not the same member of the public. The janitor says he’s getting very uncomfortable cleaning this mess every day.

I’m not sure how to approach the conversation with the suspected employee.

To add to the janitorial issue, this suspected employee has had other coworkers complain about his body odor and I had already planned to have a conversation with him about that. The janitor apparently shared his concerns about the bio-waste with one of those employees who complained (his manager who orders his supplies, so I suppose that was appropriate) and now some cruel rumors are swirling around the building about the suspected employee and his poor hygiene (i.e. he doesn’t wipe, he can’t control himself, he can’t figure out how a toilet works).

Ugh. You’ve just got to say it. “This is awkward to bring up. When you use the bathroom, please make sure you clean up the seat when you’re done so that it’s clean for the next person.”

It’s more complicated because you need to address odor issues too, but rolling both into the same conversation will be easier than two awkward conversations. There’s advice on how to address body odor here.

But you’ve also got to talk to the manager who apparently gossiped about this guy and is responsible for cruel rumors about him. That’s not okay for a manager to be doing — it’s really not okay for anyone to do, but managers in particular should be held to higher standards on something like this — and you need to have a conversation with them about professionalism, discretion, and the right way to handle concerns.

2. I’m doing higher level work but can’t get promoted

I have been working in my division for about five years and in that time have taken it from a disorganized mess to a reasonably well-functioning and profitable unit.

The problem is that my level of authority is not commensurate with my expected duties. I do the work typically assigned to a department lead, but I’ve been told that there is no lead for my area. My title is no longer “associate,” but functionally, I’m still treated as one. I have no authority to direct newer employees (while some do give me a “seniority deference,” there are others who blatantly ignore company procedures, even after I remind them). When a customer asks for certain information, such as when an order is coming in, I have to ask the daily manager, who usually gives them a non-answer. Even getting a particular product from offsite storage is a dice roll.

I’ve been following the common wisdom of “do the job to get the job,” but I’m not seeing any progress. At my last review (another good one), the manager assured me that I would be given support in gaining an actual upgrade to my position. Annual reviews are coming up soon, and none of this support has been forthcoming.

Should I just polish my resume, hunker down and revert to my actual job until I find a better company? This would likely cause the department as a whole to degrade, which I don’t like, but I’m tired of doing more work for less pay, and even less appreciation. Or is there any way I can break through their tactic of just telling me what I want to hear until the next review comes around?

Are you doing this higher level work because you’ve been told to, or because you stepped in where you saw a need and hoped it would be rewarded?

Either way, the right next step is probably to revert to the work you’re actually being paid for since they’re demonstrating that, at least for now, they’re not willing to pay you appropriately for it. If you’ve been assigned it, it’s trickier, but you can say something like, “I’m not comfortable continuing to act as a lead without the formal authority to do that. I’d love to talk about making it formal if it’s work you want me to be doing, but otherwise I want to respect the boundaries of the role I’m in.” If you’ve just been doing the extras on your own, you don’t need to explicitly address it at all; in that case, you can just go back to the job they’re telling you that you have.

Related:
can I refuse to take on more work until I get a promotion and a raise?

3. Answering short essay questions with a job application

I recently applied for an internal role that included two short answer questions along with the standard cover letter, resume, and writing sample. When I searched your site for help on how to address these, the most I could find was your explanation for why you are not a fan of them. Another leader in my organization (who was not involved in this hiring process) said they are used to weed out people who are mass applying, can’t follow instructions, or are not taking the application seriously. Regardless of whether this is a valid reason or not, what is your best advice if you are working on an application that requires responses to short answer questions?

Depends on the context. If it’s only two, go ahead and answer them and think of it as similar to being asked to address specific topics in your cover letter, which isn’t inherently unreasonable. If they haven’t given you any guidance on length, aim for two to four paragraphs.

Where it becomes unreasonable is if they’re asking for lots of essays (as with this employer that asked for 30) or if they ask for things that would be far better addressed in an interview (like this company, or this company) or that have little value in screening at this stage (like this company).

4. Can I ask my current job to match an internal offer’s salary?

I’ve been interviewing for a lateral position within my company, and now that I’m nearing the end of the process I’ve decided that the new position wouldn’t be a good fit for me for a variety of reasons. However, I am underpaid in my current position. Because the two jobs are so similar, if I’m offered the new position, and if they offer a slightly higher salary than I’m currently making, can I leverage the offer to ask for a matched salary in my current role, even though I’m staying with the team regardless?

Probably not. Companies are sometimes open to matching the salary you’ve been offered for an outside job as a way of keeping you with the company (although even then it can be a bad idea, for the reasons here), but it’s not generally a thing that happens with internal roles. Plus, there’s a decent chance they’re going to be annoyed that you went through their whole hiring process, turned down the job, and now are trying to use it to get more money for the job you’re not leaving.

In fact, if you’re sure you won’t take the job if it’s offered, in many companies you’d be better off explaining that and withdrawing now. Rightly or wrongly, when you’re applying internally there’s often a lot more of an assumption that if you stay in the process it’s because you’ll accept the job if offered, as long as you can come to terms on salary.

You can ask for a raise on your own merits, but don’t tie it to the other job.

5. How can my resume list an accomplishment that didn’t last?

How do you describe an accomplishment that was quickly, and visibly, undone by your colleagues?

I used to be on Team A. Team A is responsible for quarterly work that is required for regulatory compliance. I rebuilt the process in a way that made it faster, more transparent, and less prone to defects. The production time dropped substantially (think weeks to days). Things were good.

After a couple years, I moved to Team B. Team B works closely with Team A but isn’t directly responsible for that same work. Over time, it became clear that Team A was no longer maintaining the process I’d put in place. The inefficiencies of what they were doing instead compounded every cycle, and eventually the process was taking even longer than before, to the point that the work was regularly late. Things are better now, but the problems went on long enough that the company has a reputation in the industry for not producing this on time now.

The improved process was one of my major accomplishments on Team A, and I would want to put it on my resume and discuss it in an interview. But if I were to look for a job in the same industry, it’s quite likely I would be talking to people who know my company’s reputation. So my question is threefold: (1) How do I present this accomplishment in a way that makes it clear that subsequent problems were, um, not my fault? (2) How do I do this without throwing my colleagues under the bus? (3) If the process I built could be undermined so easily, was it even that great to begin with?

“Created and implemented process that during my tenure sped up X by 20%, reduced errors by 15%, and introduced greater transparency into Y and Z.”

“During my tenure” is the only caveat you need. You’re not throwing colleagues under the bus by reporting that things ran well when you were managing the process. Whatever inferences your interviewers might make about what happened after you left are unavoidable. And if you’re asked about that directly, you can say, “My understanding is that after I left, they implemented a different process and unfortunately the results weren’t as strong.”

And your achievement isn’t negated by the fact that it required people to actually use the process you created in order to continue working! If the circumstances were something more like “I wrote it in an obscure coding language that I should have foreseen no one would have the ability to use once I was gone,” that would be a weakness of your solution. But “they didn’t bother with it once I was gone” is not.