Told her to resign over this - AIBU?

[tiv2020]

A coworker of mine recounted to me how she had gone to our manager with a complaint that whenever she is off duty (sick/on holiday/whatever) her workload is only perfunctorily looked after by the appointed substitutes, who often perform just the easiest / most basic tasks, procrastinate till she is due back in, and generally act as if her "inherited" workload takes a back seat versus completing their usual tasks.
She is a good and conscentious worker who gives her 100% and cares about providing good service to her customers, many of which have followed her when she switched to our company several years ago.
She suggested that her substitutes get more training in her role (she has a special "niche" job and her substitutes do not have nearly the same level of expertise, possibly adding to their lack of confidence in tackling demanding tasks) or that she got a trainee to team up with.

Our manager replied he did not think the team were neglecting her work, that they did the best they could considering what was on their plate already, and that if she wished to address the issue she should talk to them herself.

I told her to resign.
My reasoning being that our manager is a waste of space who is only in his role because of nepotism (he's one of the sons of the founder) but he is utterly unwilling to exert any effort in managing anything at all. And that from the little i have seen of office life over the years (i WFH 90% of the time) i very much trust her word over his, her workload IS being neglected, and nobody but her gives a damn. Since she clearly feels let down by his lack of interest in her contribution to the company, she should try and find another place, and once more bring her customers with her.
Aibu?

Nope, you still don't get to tell her what to do.

Especially as you don't even work with her and you're just basing your reaction on her word alone.

She's complaining about something that is standard. No-one who is providing holiday cover neglects their own workload to prioritise the other workload. That's nonsensical.
Telling anyone to resign in a cost of living crisis is very irresponsible especially when they are complaining about standard office practise. Do you dislike her?

@tiv2020 are you in the process of resigning yourself?

can you not be her substitute? if not, my advice is for YOU to resign.

advising your friend to resign is OTT, as someone else said. I thought it was her manager who asked her to resign, only to see it was you. please resign.

So her work is relationship based (i.e. she has a roster of clients who use her time and again because of the service she provides) and time sensitive. So the lack of effort by her colleagues when she’s away (that she presumably provides on her colleagues behalf when they are away?) means her personal reputation is tarnished by the poor service provided?

In that case, YANBU, I would be advising her to look for another job too.

I’m assuming it’s not a problem for the manager (the work not being done while she’s out) so I’m not sure why it’s a problem for her.

It’s perfectly normal for only time-sensitive/critical work to be completed by someone covering. What do you think would happen to the covering employee’s work if they were spending all their time doing your friend’s work? It wouldn’t get done, right? They should spend all their time keeping your friends work covered and letting their own slide?

Your friend is being ridiculous and so are you for this suggestion. It will be the same any other workplace.

That's not the kind of role I work in. So is everyone expected to do 52 weeks of work in the 46/47 weeks the work over the year??

At work it's my responsibility to do as much as I can before I finish for holidays. I do handover notes if there's anything critical due to happen while I'm away and put an out of office on with a colleague's name for 'anything urgent'.

I usually return to a mountain of emails and new tasks. It would ever occur to me that my colleagues would pick up my workload in my absence. They have their own jobs.

Apart from really, really niche roles, I thought this was how jobs worked!

Yes, thank you for summing it up better than I had.
This is what I meant.
I apologize for my poor choice of words. English is not my first language and I am not perfectly fluent.
I did not tell her to resign.
I suggested, since our manager's response was making her feel undervalued, that she should start looking for another job.

The reason i do not resign or look for another job myself is that i found that i rather enjoy the perks of having a manager who does not give a toss about what I am doing. I take it as permission to care not a jot more than he does.

She clearly is at the stage when she does care about doing a good job. Its a shame she does not get any recognition for it imho.

That’s a simplistic way to look at it, but sort of, yes.

The reality is in a lot of office based positions (for lack of a better term) if you will be taking time off you get ahead of your work before you leave, your cover takes care urgent/time sensitive things while you are out, and you catch up when you return.

Presumably, you (the person who will be away) and the cover both have full plates, the cover has to fit in the other person’s work while doing their own so during the cover period both low priority work for both is set aside.

Do you or her really think the situation will be different somewhere else? Have either of you worked somewhere where there is bench with people doing nothing just waiting to cover absences by others?

how long have you been in the workforce if you don’t mind me asking?

Look for another job, but don't resign from your present post until you have a written job offer from a new employer and have accepted said offer. Otherwise if you resign from your presen tpost before you've found a new job you could find yourself unemployed - at least with your present job, no matter how useless your manager is, at least it provides you with an income and money to live on.

Also suggested to her that if it's not a problem for the manager it definitely should not be hers.
But she values her relationship with the customers and feels bad that they have been neglected during her absence.

We are talking abou a workload from 1 person to be spread among 4 coworkers.
Usually what happens in these case is that the appointed substitutes pitch in and (if necessary) work overtime to complete their ususl tasks and the addiotional share.

How often is she out of office for this to be such a big deal?

Sounds like a good Manager to me.

Totally unrealistic expectations by the both of you. Even with spreading the work out.

I’m guessing she’s making it known to her coworkers that she’s not pleased with their efforts while they are covering?

I think YABU, it's only a resigning issue if she's tried to resolve it by several routes and she feels it is such a big problem it's insurmountable for her. How often is she off that this is a big problem? Even then she shouldn't resign unless she finds another role (assuming she can't afford to just leave with no salary).

I mean what’s it got to do with you? Unless you’re going to cover her wages until she finds a new job?

Her complaint is that its not her Low Priority work which is being set aside
But random chunks of her actual Vip customers work too

And this could be rectified in her opinion by having her substitutes have more training in her role so they could better assess the priorities and hopefully be more effective in tackling the job
Or getting a trainee to help her, which she said should be amply covered by the revenue her work brings the company.

I have worked in the field for 20 years.
I have covered for missing coworkers a number of times. It happened several times that I was the only substitute, meaning that yes my work did double.

Of course the general standard dies suffer and whatever can be postponed gets postponed.
Whatever cannot be postponed however needs to be done.

How much sick leave does this woman take?

The only time I've had people 'drafted in' to cover my role was when I was off sick with COVID for four weeks and then had a gradual return to work with part time hours.

If she is in a niche role it does sound normal. Even when I had a standard engineering job the other engineers didn't take on my workload when I was on holiday. It was my responsibility to arrange things so the projects weren't held up too much by my absence.

I hope your colleague doesn't just resign because that is bad advice. If your manager is terrible then you both should look for other jobs.

She is not, and wisely, imho.
Genuinely curious here - would you consider acceptable being told what to do by a coworker?
Should not the manager review the performance of the team members and let them know the areas where they need to improve?

Honestly our manager suggestion that she should be the one to tell the coworkers it's not ok to potentially lose customers worth tens of thousands if euro in profit per year sounded like utter Bs to both of us. What is his job then?

Why hasn't she taken the initiative herself to train/explain to her colleagues how to do the important bits she really wants? She knows they don't know how to do it yet still gets annoyed when she comes back and it's not done.

Well clearly she should just leave then and find a new position that includes an assistant. I really just don’t know what else to say, and you your friend is not being appreciated to level befitting their logistics prowess. 😉

Now for real response, I’ve been managing similar roles for 20-mumblety years and while I appreciate my high performers and do everything I can to support them, that being said, I’m getting diva vibes from your descriptions.

The cold hard reality is that things slide when people are out of the office. I tell those covering to do their best, keep the wheels on the bus, and not to worry if they have to prioritize. I would have given the same response as your friends manager.

I appreciate your friends problem however, you mentioned spreading her workload over 4 co-workers when she is off. It is not practical to add 25% to the rest of the team's workload because someone is off for whatever reason. If we work a 40 hour week, it is unreasonable for everyone to have to work 50 hour weeks to cover - something has to give

If she has VIP clients, then surely they would know she's going on holiday and adapt to it.

Maybe it sounds like the manager doesn't see it as problem, hence why they are not getting involved.

If she completes a handover of her work, she empathise who the important clients are.

It sounds like their isn't enough staff to do the work for anyone to have any time off.