Colleague reported me for phone usage - awkward!!

[AmyRuby]

I work in a fairly large office and there’s a very much ‘common sense’ approach to personal phone usage. No one sits at their desk and takes lengthy personal calls, but management accept there will be times people need to check/use their phones briefly and that for anything longer, they’ll step away from their desk or wait for breaks and lunch.

I had my 1:1 with my Manager today who told me that someone has reported to her that I’ve conversed with delivery drivers using my ring doorbell whilst at my desk - I simply say ‘please leave that round the side’ if no one’s in. I try to schedule deliveries for my WFH days but can’t always control that so it’s only a handful of
times this has happened.

My manager was clear she doesn’t have an issue with my phone usage and obviously she can’t tell me who reported it, although I have an idea.

This person will have known our manager will have had to say something to me - am I wrong to find them reporting this a bit pathetic? It just risks an awkward atmosphere when we are generally a fairly harmonious team.

I think perhaps it's useful to know if someone has reported you just so you can be more aware going forward (that someone notices such things), but it doesn't sound as though you've done anything wrong.

Unless the manager heard the conversation they won't know about it.

It may be their way of highlighting watch your back?

Your manager is fine with it, and that's the only thing that matters. The person who reported you is a fucking snake. At least you know this in advance now.

Why would a colleague report one off phone usage if that was the case?

Because they're an arse?

Yes, this.

I worked for 18 months in an all female office and found out that my "friend" at work had complained that I never locked up at the end of the day. What she didn't realize was that I was always first in, to unlock the office and put everything on quite early at the start of the day for everyone else. Fucker. I never saw her in the same light again.

Once worked for a very toxic workplace. The head of department would pass on things like this through the managers just around bonus time and say a co worker said this and caused team members not to trust each other.

Regardless of if your manager cross about it and using an “anonymous” person instead of just addressing it directly.

or someone in your team is that petty to report this type of thing and your boss forgot the previous directive over phone usage, didn’t tell the snitch to wind their neck in (because they are a bad manager and Lilly livered and told you instead.

Both scenarios signal something about your workplace culture is off and your manager isn’t an especially effective manager. Either you have a Lilly livered boss without a spine to say stop doing x to you or you have a boss who would openly put team mate against team mate rather than engage their brain and act like a decent manager.

Good managers don’t need to say I have hear from an anonymous source your doing x on your phone, because it’s lazy, gaslighting, harmful to teams dynamics and ineffective.

I strongly suspect this is the tip of the iceberg in terms of dysfunction in your work place.

speak to co workers - I suspect this type of thing is a “method” your manager has used before.

Is your phone on silent or is the Ring Door bell audible?
Only ask because I have a friend whose audible alerts drive me mildly nuts and I wouldn’t like it in the office. Although to be fair, I would speak to them myself and not involve a manager.

Everything is pathetic when you get told you are taking the piss. The person who reported you obviously feels this is you.

I’d be more concerned at the member of staff who had taken it upon themselves to police everyone else’s behaviour rather than getting on with their own work. I worked nearly twenty years with colleagues like this, it was exhausting

there are two possibilities here as I see it,

1. a colleague has reported you so either they have a problem with you generally or your phone usage is problematic or
2. your manager made up an anonymous reporter such that they have a problem with you or your phone usage.

Either way, you can be sure that someone either dislikes the amount you use your phone or has a problem with you. In my view it would be wise, if you like the job and it is harmonious to lower my phone usage and closely monitor my relationships in case you are unaware of someone potentially looking to cause you difficulties. So in many ways I’d be pleased in the longer term to have this info in a way that hasn’t, currently, caused you difficulty at work.

My last few roles have been on the leadership team of small companies, there are always one or two of these who like to snitch on every little thing - it annoys me so much.

I’ve ended up telling people to focus on their own work and only come to me if there’s an issue that disrupts other people significantly or if they are aware of serious misconduct like fraud/theft. I don’t want to hear that employee x took 15 minutes extra for lunch or someone is looking at their phone. It’s often the snitchers who are more damaging to the company, rather than the people being snitched on 🤨

There's no reason your manager would have "had" to say something. They chose to, and its worth questioning yourself on why that would be.

Why has your manager passed this on? If she's genuinely not bothered?

my first thought as well.

I manage people. Unless it is an issue, I wouldn’t have mentioned it.

It’s your manager.

The miserable fecker !!

I usually tell my staff stuff like this not because I have an issue, but because they need to know someone is watching them and taking issue with them. I would never say who reported them, but you'd be surprised how quickly these things escalate if I don't promise to 'have a word'.

Then you are a really poor manager.

Does the Ring ding dong noise disturb others if you have it on too loud? Are you shouting into the phone to the delivery driver so that everyone can hear? If not I'm not sure what the problem is.

Sure. Enjoy.

In my experience it's the "snitchers" who do all the work while nothing is ever done about the ones taking the piss and eventually they get pissed off and say something. Usually because the "snitchee" is friendly with the boss, or does them a personal favour now and again or their kids are friends or whatever, they get away with murder.

I'm not saying all "snitchees" are swinging the lead. But far too many times they take the piss and nothing is done cos line managers don't want to be arsed dealing with it.

Hmm. I wouldn’t report it but I would find it annoying if someone was talking to delivery drivers at their desk.

I was in the office for the past 2 days and was not aware of anyone else taking personal calls or talking through their Ring doorbell. So even once would have stood out.

If I get a personal call, I step to a side room or hallway. Can you not do that when you get a ring notification? What do you do if you’re in a meeting and the delivery driver comes? I bet they still manage to leave the parcel don’t they, so why do you have to talk to them? Just a bit confused. And potentially seeing where it could annoy others.

I'd think that either:
The manager has an issue and is trying to gently warn you that they don't want to make it a bigger issue
or
The Op is on the phone for a lot longer than they think (and a lot of people do think they've only been on for such a short time, when in reality they've had far longer) and the conversation was along the lines of "I'm really struggling to concentrate because Amy had six conversations today along the lines of: Hi, is that my delivery? I was expecting it at 11:32 and it's 11:37 so that's really good timing, I'm so excited to get it finally.. just leave it down the side. No, there's no one in but if you go right to the end, then there's a green box, if you leave it behind there... yes that's right. The green box is our safe place. Can you just tell me if the cat is still there... it sometimes forgets how to use the cat flap..."

The responses on here of "snitching", "policing other behaviour", "petty" "pathetic" tells you exactly why if the phone calls are annoying people they've gone to the manager rather than having a quiet word.

I usually get up from my desk to take a personal call so my colleagues wouldn't know what it's about. I have to take calls in case it's about my kids -- and my work could care less as long as I get my work done. Maybe just start walking away as you answer a call and no one will snoop/ overhear.