Tell me about your colleagues’ cheeky fuckery

[fuseboom]

A colleague volunteered me for something to my boss without discussing it with me first. I don’t want to be too outing but it’s somewhat akin to volunteering me for night shifts if I typically worked day shifts a and only day shifts were in my contact.

I spoke to my boss about it and they said that this colleague had said someone in another department had asked him to do this. I think this person doesn’t exist 🤣.

I see the funny side as my boss fully backs me up. The colleague is not a malicious person I just think they didn’t want to do this particular work themselves anymore (not unreasonable) but didn’t dare just say so so the solution was to pass it on to yours truly 🤔😂. Without me agreeing. 👀

Please share your stories of your colleague related cheeky fuckery 😊

@2pence as pp have said, if the contract includes weekend/short notice working then the person taking that contract should honour it, not avoid it. Those covering may well have older relative needing support, or indeed want to try for a family themselves. Or just want people to honour their contract. If it doesn't suit them they could try for roles that did not have that expectation.

If someone can't do the short notice because they provide care for a dependent, be this a child, an elderly person or a person with a disability, then the work will have to be covered by someone who can.

You can't exclude sections of society from roles because they have dependents. This is discrimination.

The difference between equality and equity (as you're clearly not understanding how reasonable adjustments work) is that rather than treat everybody the same, instead you provide people with what they need to do their job and not be at a disadvantage. For those with disabilities, reasonable adjustments are a protected right. Being a parent is not one of the 9 protected characteristics but, given that women provide the majority of child care, a rule that everyone MUST work lates and weekends breaches the Equality Act as Indirect Discrimination.

Luckily, it seems your bosses understand how the Act protects their staff because you believe you are being hard done by because someone else has a reasonable adjustment in place and you don't (because you don't actually need one).

You also cannot accept a job with hours and commitments you can fulfil.

If I was paid the same as someone else, who accepted and agreed to the same contract and t&c's, but who was never rota'd to do antisocial hours, but I was, I wouldn't work there very long or I'd expect more money/them to be paid less.

As antisocial hours usually receive extra pay, why should someone receive the same money but never do the work they said they would?

Also, if someone accepted those conditions then came with reasons why they couldn't stick to them, I'd expect them to be let go.

We are allocated tasks to do, which take anything from 30 seconds to 5 mins depending on the task and you don't know until you've opened it
Being deliberately vague!
It's a giant list of about 9000 and we are meant to work our way through

I discovered you can search the list to see who has done what, and how many. I did 300. Someone else did 5

Our line manager can't appear to solve the issue of the fact nobody else was doing any, and I was getting upset/frustrated over it
So I've stopped doing any of the tasks until everyone gets to the number I have already done. Blissful, manager isn't particularly happy but agrees with me and can't say anything as I have done so many. Quiet quitting

Now CF who did 5 is complaining the tasks don't seem to be going down
No shit... if you don't do them, they don't go down!

It happens with every type of job given to us so now in my head I split the task by team members, work out how many I should do. And I do just that amount and no more. No job ever gets completed now because nobody else does their share

Some years ago I was employed by a large organisation as a subby to fit a smallish kitchen. It took 5 days at a steady pace. 3 days in, I was offered a number of further weeks with them on the back of it, which was great, however 2 of the permanent staff clearly had a huge problem with me which was made very clear in the workshop and at tea breaks. I had no idea what I'd done to offend them. It wasn't until I'd been there a couple of months that someone casually dropped into conversation how they were still angry at me for making them look bad with the kitchen. How did I do that? I asked - turns out they had fitted a similar size one just before I started and had strung it out for 2 weeks between the 2 of them!
The same two always played the system with called-in maintenance tickets too. When allocated to tickets, the process was to check for urgent repairs then go by date order. The number of tickets completed over a week would be monitored (although clearly not closely enough!). Some tickets were literally a 5 min job, others could take a whole week. This pair would always skim off all the quick jobs, but despite that still manage the lower end of the weekly ticket tally. They made looking busy into a full time job.

Oh stop the pearl clutching. Your attitude towards those without children is discriminatory and utterly offensive.

Actually @PyjamaFan, it's the absolute opposite.

My attitude is in line with current employment law and most importantly, the Equality Act 2010.

Being a parent is not a protected characteristic, so firstly you need to understand what it means to discriminate.

A parent or carer can work antisocial hours (I often do) but they have dependants and the dependants needs outweigh the needs of a person with no dependents. A dependent cannot be left without care, this is neglect. It is not the parents needs that outweigh a non parent/carer, it is the dependent's needs. Does that make it clearer?

I'll give an example of equality vs equity. There's a 5ft tall wall. You have 3 employees, one is 6ft tall, another 5ft tall, and another 4ft tall. You have three 1ft tall boxes to share between them. If you share EQUALLY, then the 6ft tall person is now 7ft and stands much taller than the others. The 5ft tall person can now see over the wall but the 4ft tall person still cannot. However, if you take the box from the 6ft tall person and give it to the 4ft tall person, everyone now stands at the same height and now has equal opportunity to see over the wall. Of course the 6ft tall person will whinge "Where's my box? How comes that short person has 2 boxes and I have none?"

@2pence - equity only goes so far. The job still has to be done and it is not fair if out of 4 people who share the weekend shifts (as an example) 3 of them never do them so the 4th has to do them every weekend. And I say that as a single mother who didn't apply for jobs that I knew I couldn't do due to taking into consideration my DC's needs!!

I had a call centre job which had a rolling 6 week shift pattern, 1 week 8-4, then 8.30-4.30, 9-5, 10-6, 11-7 and 12-8. If we needed to we could swap shifts with others. That was the only flexibility because otherwise we were tied to out computers and had to be available for the calls.

There was one pregnant woman who asked me to swap my 2 weeks of early shifts for her late 2 weeks as an ongoing thing. If she had a medical reason her GP could have written a note and work would have had those shifts organised. She was really annoyed when I said no, and couldn't understand why her pregnancy didn't trump the fact that as a single parent I was already juggling 2 out of 6 weeks of late shifts (thank God for WFH, slow cookers, fellow parents from DC's sporting teams and pretty darn good kids!) and it wouldn't be fair on them for me to have 4 weeks out of 6 as lates.

After several requests I told her flat out that it wasn't happening and to stop asking, and asked her Team Leader to get her to stop badgering me about it, which fortunately he did.

But if the requirement of the job is to see over the wall without having to stand on boxes then the other 2 can't complain about not being able to do the job, and need to find other jobs.

So we don't employ the Jewish person who can't work Saturdays then?

We don't employ the person in a wheelchair because they can't reach the items on the top shelf therefore cannot lone work?

We don't employ the person who lives and provides care for their elderly parents because they cannot travel overnight?

This is called discrimination, and we have a very specific law that protects employees against such behaviour. I've mentioned it a few times now - the Equality Act 2010.

In my example, some people need 2 boxes to have equal opportunity to those who do not need to stand on a box.

Being fair is not treating everyone equally. It is giving people what they NEED to not be at a disadvantage. Therefore if a person doesn't have the barrier of providing care for a dependent, then their duties may be different because they don't need the reasonable adjustment (the 1 ft box).

My office was given a box of really nice chocolates. Each chocolate was big. A colleague ran to open the box and returned to her desk with ten chocolates. I know it was ten because another colleague asked her. She ate them all and then felt sick.

In another office, it became clear that the reason my work load was complex was because colleagues were taking all the easy stuff, despite the fact that you were supposed to take in date order. Management checked the quantity of our work and the accuracy. Although I was good at my job, I couldn’t match others for quantity when I had the difficult cases. I was also more likely to make a mistake, given the difficulty of the work. Even another team in the office (who fielded calls on cases) said I always seemed to get the complicated work.

Yes @2pence, but there are LIMITS!

If you want to go throwing the Discrimination Act around perhaps you should read watch further into what are REASONABLE adjustments?

What’s meant by reasonable?
Adjustments only have to be made if it’s reasonable to do so. What's a reasonable thing to ask for depends on things like:
• your disability
• how practicable the changes are
• if the change you ask for would overcome the disadvantage you and other disabled people experience
• the size of the organisation
• how much money and resources are available
• the cost of making the changes
• if any changes have already been made.

@OrderOfTheKookaburra Yes, that's why they're called REASONABLE Adjustments.

Therefore some team members duties may look different if the business can sustain them and maintain productivity.

Yes, and so calling out that poster for getting upset at working all the weekends when all her other colleagues don't was ridiculous, because clearly it's not reasonable for ONE person to always pick up the weekend emergencies just because they don't have children.

That's why people are arguing with you. Because you are commenting on CF level of adjustments requested, not reasonable ones.

Being fair is not treating everyone equally. It is giving people what they NEED to not be at a disadvantage.

An adjustment is not Reasonable if it disadvantages others though.

I had an interview through an agency. The employer wanted to give me the job but not pay the agency so they told them I didn't get the role. I should have heeded the 🚩's then and there but I really needed the money. One of the worst places I ever worked.

I had a line manager who resented me massively (her favourite went for my job and I got it... and I am not from the UK and she had regular rants about how it should be 'British jobs for British people'.) She would go into our electronic records (I am a solicitor and we time record our work which is linked to our pay etc) and changed them then complained to the equity partners that i was lazy and not doing any work. Thankfully we have an audit facility on the computer system (I am not sure what it called) so it very quicjkly came to light that this is what she was doing. All that happened is that I got moved to a different department and she was not even reprimanded, never mind fired.

Fucking bitch.

Some people do not need a box. Aren't they lucky?

Some people need 2 boxes. Instead of being jealous of their 2 boxes perhaps try employing some empathy and think about how different their life is to someone who doesn't need a reasonable adjustment in the first place.

@2pence there is a difference between a reasonable adjustment and not being able to your job. If your job requires you to work weekends, evenings, over night it is not reasonable to expect somebody else to do all the unsociable shifts because you can’t.

Some people need 2 boxes. Instead of being jealous of their 2 boxes perhaps try employing some empathy and think about how different their life is to someone who doesn't need a reasonable adjustment in the first place.

I work in Occupational health so I assess for and recommend Reasonable adjustments day in day out. Yes it would be great if no-one ever needed them but the reality is some people do. But as stated before the adjustment is not reasonable if it significantly disadvantages other employees. If there are 3 members in a team and I recommend 1 never does backshifts (a common adjustment to manage conditions) the other 2 are significantly disadvantaged.

Reasonable adjustments relate to disability, not parenthood.

The attitude that childless people should always suck up unsociable hours because 'my dependents' is discriminatory and insulting.

Exactly.

Parents can request flexible working (as can any other employee), one of the reasons for declining is "they cannot reorganise the work among other staff".

As I stated, parenthood is not one of the 9 protected characteristics and of course flexible working is available to everyone (home-working is a viable request after 6 months of employment for example).

However, if a denial of a Reasonable Request leads to a resignation then you leave yourself open to a Discrimination claim under Constructive Dismissal. Also as mentioned, child care would be Indirect Discrimination as the issue affects women more than men under the protected characteristic of Sex.

It's a fact protected by law that people with caring responsibilities have different needs to those without them. It has to be protected by law otherwise there would be widespread discrimination against women of childbearing age (as there was previously).

Instead of pitting yourselves against carers, why not try to recognise the strength in building diverse teams and look for the attributes that individuals bring rather than their perceived deficiencies?

It’s not discriminatory to expect people to work the advertised hours of their jobs.

Requesting flexible working or changes is not remotely the same as expecting other people to do all the weekends/late finishes/bank holidays just because

@YetMoreNewBeginnings the same rules apply for those without children too. It's not discriminatory for them to work the hours either. However, if they require a reasonable adjustment and the business can absorb it, it would be discriminatory for another worker to then harass and bully them because their duties are now less favourable due to this adjustment. And, yes, complaining about things being unfair because of another person's protected characteristic or caring responsibilities does fall under Bullying, Harassment and Discrimination laws.

Anyway, this is derailing the thread, so I am happy to disagree and let it return to its purpose.