can I tell a coworker I dislike him, we upset our boss by organizing stuff, and more
It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. Can I tell a coworker I dislike him?
Is it ever safe to tell a coworker you dislike them on a personal level?
There’s a colleague I find very annoying. He hasn’t done anything wrong, but his personality is extremely different from mine. He’s far more optimistic and cheerful than I am. The disparity in our attitudes comes partly from me hating my job.
Even though there are all sorts of ways in which it could backfire, I think I would very much enjoy telling this person I don’t like him, even if only via email. If not while we’re in the same workplace, maybe on the day one of us moves elsewhere (I’m applying for other jobs at the moment). What do you think?
Don’t do that under any circumstances.
It’s a bad idea on a practical level — anyone who hears about it is likely to think of you as a jerk after that — and it’s pretty mean on a human level. People are allowed to be different from you; that doesn’t warrant randomly informing them that you don’t like them. Why does he need to know? Just to make him feel bad? Think about why you want that; it’s almost certainly about something going on with you, not him (and “the disparity in our attitudes comes partly from me hating my job” might be a clue to what that is).
You’re allowed to dislike people. You’re not allowed to be gratuitously cruel to them as a result.
Also, for what it’s worth, doing it in email makes it an even worse idea. That email is highly likely to be forwarded. (That doesn’t mean you should do it in person! Don’t do it at all.)
These are thoughts to keep to yourself or vent to friends at happy hour.
2. Having to take religious holidays as flex days
My company offers three flex holidays per person with about a dozen choices of when to use them. Most are bank holidays like Veterans Day and President’s Day, but Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur are included.
Maybe because the High Holidays fell partially over weekends the last few years I wasn’t so bothered, but this year I’m feeling a little extra bitter about having to use two of my flex holidays for religious reasons while my coworkers are using theirs for long weekends.
Am I off-base? I might just be grouchy about all things work-related these days — I work in an industry greatly affected by the tariff situation and it’s definitely making some things that I’d normally not be bothered about feel like mountains instead of molehills.
FWIW, I’m definitely not the only Jew in the office, but we are (of course) the minority and not all are observant. I don’t think I have anyone else who would join me to push back as a group as I’m imagining you advising.
This is actually very normal (and better than what many companies offer), and there’s not really anything here to push back on. After all, what would you be asking for — for some people to receive extra days off on top of what everyone else gets? Right now you all get the same number of days off, because your company recognizes that not everyone celebrates the same holidays . Yes, you have to use some of those days for religious observance, but that’s the same thing that other people who are religiously observant do. (I suppose you could argue that people who celebrate Christmas get a “free” holiday that they don’t have to use any of their flex days for, but you’re also getting that same day off to do whatever you want with.)
3. We upset our boss by organizing stuff
I’m part of a small organization and we host lots of events throughout the year. Our office is small and we don’t have much storage space, but we need things for different types of events (canopy tents for street fairs, centerpieces for fancy tables, etc.) so we rent a storage unit. The storage unit, being off-site (though not far), is inevitably a pain to go to, so it tends to be a “catch-all” where one big trip is made and stuff is thrown in there post-event. This results in quite a mess of unorganized bins, boxes, bags, etc., where the events coordinator (Rachel) has to struggle through the mess to find what she needs for the next event and the chaos snowballs.
With another event coming up, Rachel was dreading the next trip to the unit. I had some spare time so we decided we’d go together and take a couple hours to organize it all (put things in labeled bins, put bins for the same event type on the same shelves, throw away torn/unusable items, that kind of thing). Our boss, Monica, said that was fine, and we did it! It made a big difference and we’re proud of what we accomplished (and Rachel is relieved to have a system going forward).
Later, Monica had a conversation with Rachel where it turned out she didn’t know we were moving anything around, she thought we were just gathering the stuff for the event like usual (which we also did in the process). While Monica hasn’t yet been to the storage unit, she’s apparently really unhappy that we “changed things.”
Rachel and I are both baffled as to why what we did is a problem, so we’re not sure what to do now other than going back in time and making sure we were clear enough in talking to Monica beforehand. We were trying to make life easier for Rachel, who is the main person who needs to use the unit, but neither of us considered that it could upset Monica. Monica is a lovely person and is already under stress during a highly difficult time for our org, and we definitely didn’t want to add to that with something we did to be useful! We can’t exactly put it back how it was, nor would that make sense to do, but we both feel bad about upsetting her.
Since we’re just confused about what the problem even is, is there some obvious perspective you, as a third party and a manager, can see that we missed? We’d like to apologize and make sure this isn’t adding to her already-full plate, but we’re not sure the best way to approach or solve it.
My guess is that it’s about her stress level more than anything else. She’s stressed, something changed that she didn’t fully realize was changing, and now she feels stressed about that too. She may be picturing something different than what you did — in her head, the reorg might have made it harder for her to find things there now than it used to be, or she might worry things were thrown away that she wanted the chance to weigh in on first — and when you’re already stressed, that sort of thing can feel like it’s just adding to the chaos pile. She might feel quite differently once she sees it, or even once this particular period of stress has passed.
If you want to go back and address it, you could say, “We wanted to apologize — we thought we had your sign-off for organizing the storage unit and didn’t realize we hadn’t clearly conveyed that that’s what we were going to do.” You could add, “It’s a lot easier to find things now though so hopefully when you get a chance to see it, you’ll agree!”
4. Not getting a referral bonus because the candidate was hired as a freelancer instead of an employee
A few months ago, a former colleague of mine applied for a full-time position at my wife’s Fortune 50 company. Both of them made official mention that my wife had referred him to the position.
Last month, after three rounds of interviews, this person’s future direct manager told my wife that he was being offered the job. Excellent! Three hours later, their grand-boss (the person who would sign off on the hire) quit, with no notice.
In the chaos, the powers-that-be decided they would no longer hire for the permanent position my colleague had applied for; instead, they would offer a freelance position and figure out the company’s needs from there. My old colleague, whose severance was running out, decided he needed to take the job. So: bad circumstances, but good person gets employed, and that’s something of a win.
But this company offers a $1,000 bonus to employees who recommend candidates for a job if they are hired for that job. My wife would have received that bonus, but since the company changed the position from full-time to freelance and the candidate had to re-apply, she is apparently no longer eligible. This seems ludicrous to us — our acquaintance was hired freelance because all of the groundwork had been laid.
Is it worth it for my wife to go to HR to lay all of this out? She probably won’t see the money. But it has certainly left a bad taste in her mouth after 14 years of solid service.
She should let it go. If they end up converting him to an employee, she could make the case for the referral bonus at that point — but it’s very unlikely that they’re going to pay it out for a freelancer.
I’d also argue it shouldn’t leave a bad taste in her mouth! Yes, she referred him, but it’s reasonable for them to only pay out employee referral bonuses for employees … and just referring someone isn’t really a lot of work. If she’d done a huge amount of work to recruit him to work with the company and had to woo him for months or something similar, I could see being more aggravated.
5. Should I disclose my FMLA to the people I manage?
I’m working on intermittent FMLA for myself. I’m personally comfortable disclosing this, but didn’t know if I should share as a supervisor. Is it okay to let my employees know?
Yes. I’d probably wait until it’s finalized so you have something specific to share, but there’s no reason you can’t share it and it will give people useful context to understand why you’re suddenly out more than they’re used to. If you want, you could add, “I don’t want my sharing this to make anyone feel they’d need to share their own use of FMLA with the team in the future; it’s fine to work with me to keep that private if you prefer.”
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