Pulled up for “picking on someone at work”.

[ThunderRoadRunner]

I’ve been on holiday for a few weeks, and will be going back to work on Monday. I’m dreading it.

For the last couple of days before I went on holiday I lost it at work. In all my working days, which amounts to a few decades, I’ve never lost my temper.

It centred around a number of new-ish people we have in our dept. They’ve been there about 6 months. They literally do no work, do not hand over any completed work and even just leave things in the sink for other people to wash up after them etc.

I and another colleague have assertively asked them about the handovers, ask them to clean up their mess, and point out that work has not been done, which means I and a few others end up doing it. This is done professionally. However, I came in a couple of days before I went on vacation and was told there were formal complaints about “being picked on”.

I just lost it.

WIBU to expect colleagues to do their share? After all, it’s the rest of us that end up picking up the slack.

Also, I really want to go back to work with a strategy that involves me not picking up the slack for others on top of my own stressful job. Any tips?

As so often the answer lies in handling these things calmly and professionally, @DrBlackbird

It's perfectly true that nobody enjoys being pulled up on something, but that's life and fortunately protocols exist for those who can't handle this at all, though sadly it often involves them having to leave

Perhaps the real issue will be if the actual managers are capable of stepping up here, and if not I'd suggest OP look elsewhere

Since your conduct is apparently now under scrutiny I hope you're in a union.

I managed a team who were layabouts. Two in particular would come in late, lie on their timesheets, not do work and leave it for me to pick up. I was working with my manager to put them on performance improvement plans. They went to the CEO and cried and complained about bullying. Absolutely went to town on me and my boss and made us out to be awful and them to be utterly brilliant and virtuous. CEO sacked us.

It was a really shitty situation.

I settled out of court for unfair dismissal but they kept their jobs.

The lessons I learned:

1. Involve management
2. Some people are utter arseholes and you can't win

Hopefully yours won't be so bad. But id recommend look for a new role.

This could have been wrote by me. Stressful time in my office, understaffed and I’m doing 80% of the administration. Colleague working alongside me arrives 15 mins late, leaves 15 mins early, chats to team members all day, plays on phone, shops online from work computer, goes over lunch time by 15/20 minutes every day, any task they do complete is always done incorrectly with errors and has to be re-done. I discovered they only completed 2 tasks the other day in an 8 hour shift (each task would have taken 3 maybe 4 minutes to complete) so 7 hours and 50 minutes spent at leisure. I brought this up to management and team leader overheard, waltzed in and said not colleagues fault, made a number of excuses and management looked uncomfortable then told me in private it’s not on and would be looked into, nothing got done. I had to then pick up all tasks and complete myself. Colleague been there 16 years btw.

This is really good.

We have always been told that we are mature enough to talk to our peers directly about issues, and not involve management.

a) that's Managementese for "we don't want to do the job for which we are paid more and given more authority and status and which is quite literally our job title"

b) clearly the other people are happy to involve management when it suits them.

As you're being 'called in' to the meeting, the agenda will be set by your employers. Its purpose is to address the complaint about you, not to achieve the changes you wish to see, so you need to approach it first with an openess to hear what is said. Your primary aim should be to defend yourself against the allegations against you, so focus on the incident and be clear about what you said, your tone, where you were, if there were witnesses who could be supportive if the allegations are exaggerated. You can talk about your frustration with the untidy shared spaces and any impact their poor performance has on you as mitigation, but be prepared to explain why you didn't go via proper channels. If you have an anti bullying policy or dignity at work policy be familiar with it so you can defend yourself as well as possible if you feel you didn't breech it. If you're in a union give them a call. There's all sorts of potentially serious accusations that could be made against you when you 'lose it' with your colleagues.

I suggest you offer your services as a mentor for a few weeks on a Monday or Tuesday.
Work the same days and show, by example and by explanation, what a good job entails.

Meet with management and propose the mentor strategy for all new employees until they are capable of understanding the requirements of the tasks.

Explain to management by offering constructive examples of exactly what is lacking, what is needed and how the situation could be improved. Also tell how hard it is to work with people who are not up to speed. Ask management for a way to communicate with managers before the office becomes unworkable. Remind management that you are paid to do XXX job not that and also Suzie, Bob and Netties jobs as well.

This comes down to poor management then. Absolutely shouldn’t be leaving things to employees to sort out. Managers should manage, and that includes these sort of situations.

Thing is none of us can tell whether the real story is:

They're not doing everything to your standards, but are doing it well enough and your behaviour to them is at best inappropriate and definitely could be construed as bullying.
Or
They're totally not doing their job right, and needed to be picked up on and your complaints were professionally and calmly put to them.

The truth probably is somewhere in the middle.
But on the basis you have described yourself as losing it, I'd suspect closer to the first.

As others have said, if it is that bad, then it will really have been noticed in your absence that things aren't being done.

Is the issue that they work Monday-Wednesday and then you come in on Wednesday -Friday and nothing has been done so in order to do the project you and your colleagues have to do the whole project in 3 days instead of the 5 days it should take without getting into a sweat and panic

I would be asking why exactly they want these extra people as they are just adding to the work load because you have to waste your time cleaning up after them and impacting company profits by paying people to sit around and do nothing

YABU. This isn’t your issue to resolve with a quiet chat. This is a bigger problem and one that needs to be addressed by management. It should never have got to the point of you "losing it".

You clearly need for management to manage the situation. Each and every time you go in and work has not been done by your work partner from the previous days then document it. Raise the issues with management-they can’t help or deal with it if you just always pick up the slack. Ask for a meeting and talk through the issues

Management can't have it both ways. They either expect you and your colleagues to discuss issues and leave you to it or they manage.

Write down everything that you are having to do to pick up the slack, detail what they should be doing and aren't. Ask for a meeting with management. It would be better if you could get together with the others who feel like you.

The new ones should be on probation and should be being managed properly. Their probation can be extended if they aren't doing the job properly.

Make it quite clear to management that you aren't picking on anyone, merely asking them to do the job that they are employed to do, which includes keeping the working space clean and tidy.

I’m not the manager. We have always been told that we are mature enough to talk to our peers directly about issues, and not involve management.

Well that's not working is it?

So it should be abundantly clear you need to involve management.

How did you 'lose it'?

I don't think thats great management (from them, not you). They're basically leaving you to do the difficult bits and then when it goes south it leads to situations like this. If they were aware of these issues already they'd have been able to step in and/or be able to counter the claims that you've been picking on them.

Those people are not being managed properly.

Expecting people to sort things out without managers is an invitation for conflict and clashes - and a neat cop-out for the managers, as you try to do their probably higher paid job for them. Stop that.

The situation should not be causing you so much stress that you lose it.

Do you have a union, a staff wellbeing team?

With each project, you all need clear agreements in writing re who does what by when, led by a leader who can actually lead.

Dates diaried for progress reports. Deadlines.

Regular meetings with your own line manager to update them on your own progress, where you can highlight how you're ready - and are waiting for the others to be, too. Same for the other team members. Their managers need to liaise with yours, if they're not the same person. This will highlight how while some are delivering, others are slacking.

In my last contract, we had weekly catch ups and monthly formal 1-1s to build the annual performance report content. Have to confess, that really focussed and tightened up my own tendency to 'relax', to do the thing I fancied doing rather than the thing I needed to do!

Does your org have this culture?

If not, it's setting you, your team and the LM up for failure.

You may need to be proactive and diary and press for the regular 1-1 with your LM yourself.

And if they resist, you have a LM attitude and employer culture problem that goes far deeper than a few lazy-arsed coasters.

Also, stop cleaning up after them. You're not their mum. Be scrupulous about being clean and tidy yourself and leave them to their mess.

I had a similar situation except there were two of us in the office and I was senior due to longer service. She decided she wanted to go to another dept and when I came back from 1 weeks leave was surprised to see a different person in my office. We had a lot of problems as work was not being done and I ended up picking up the slack. When I spoke to the newbie it transpired that the previous one, who "showed" her how to do the job had made such a mess of it the new girl didn't have a clue what do. I went through everything with her till she understood and this solved the problem. All jobs done on time.

The problem resurfaced when original girl wanted to come back and the two of them swapped depts, except original one wanted my job, which she got. She also wanted more money, which she got. All I got was a load of shit from the owners for things not being done. This was because she didn't know what to do or how to do it. The owner suggested I point this person in the right direction. I said she is being paid more than I was for doing the job so she can do it. I asked for a complete list of my new tasks, which I got, and stuck to it. When there was moaning about this, that and the other not being done properly/on time etc I would tell them not my job description, not my pay grade.

It is bloody annoying when your own job is compromised by someone else's poor efforts. My advice would be to take a step back and don't care as much. You won't be any better thought of. If the handover work isn't ready for you to carry on/complete ask your manager where it is. Tell them you can't do your job until you receive it. If it is only partially completed tell them you can't do everything and ask what you should prioritise. At the end of the day these people are being paid to do the work. It is difficult to know exactly what to say without knowing, roughly, what sort of job you do and what it entails. If it is medical/life threatening then that is one thing, but if its just office based and targets aren't being met then I would just do your job as best you can and go home. Fair enough if you are paid decent overtime and you could do with the extra cash (who couldn't) but if its a flat wage/salary its not worth getting yourself worked up about. You may even find that on Monday the whole thing has blown over and been forgotten. Don't engage with them again if their work is still slack but go to the management. They are paid to manage, you are not.

We had a similar problem at work with lazy new people. The answer was to stop managing them, and working hard to make up their short fall. Let them be late, send emails to the manager highlighting no work's been done and handed over. Allow the deadline to be missed. Document it all and email the manager. This led to them being pulled up, and eventually disciplined. Do it the right way. But you have to go against your nature, and allow the deadlines to be missed. If you keep covering for them, it appears to be no problem. So let the problem happen, and sit back.

It centred around a number of new-ish people we have in our dept. They’ve been there about 6 months. They literally do no work, do not hand over any completed work and even just leave things in the sink for other people to wash up after them etc.

@ThunderRoadRunner what ages are these people? Are they Gen Z * * (born 1997 – 2012 so for these purposes 18 - 27)? If so, it's well known that they have a work ethic cultural problem - they are late, opinionated and very aggressive about asserting boundaries. They expect to be able to do what they want to do when they want to do it.

https://www.generationtechblog.com/p/gen-z-really-does-have-a-work-ethic

You need to make a formal complaint preferably in conjunction with your other colleague and document precise instances of problems - dates, times and what the issue was. If you can't identify anythign specific now, record it going forward

It really suck doesn't it? In my experience, 10% of employees do 90% of the work.

I think once this starts getting to you in a team, it becomes personal, and it's time to look for another job. Otherwise it descends into HR complaints and massive stress.

Good luck.

Surely the answer is obvious- you put your complaints in writing to the line manager every single time it happens.
You need to act with utmost professionalism now otherwise it will be you in trouble, not them

I had a colleague take it upon themselves to “clean up my mess” of an expensive thermos flask - by putting it straight in the bin. Because she decided drinks weren’t allowed in that area. If you have concerns raise them through the correct formal channels.

You start documenting. When you come in Wednesday and have poor handover and work isn't done, you send an email to whole team Inc management stating factually that x,y and z is still outstanding and could you get clarification on the handover as details are missing. Rinse and repeat