It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. My terrible coworker is impossible to get rid of
I’m going insane. I love my job, my leadership, and my team, but I have one coworker who is the absolute worst. She comes in late, leaves early, spends the day gossiping and hanging out in people’s offices, is extremely nosy, super rude/mean, never does her job, when she does do her job it’s mediocre or bad, paranoid, and has a BO problem.
Other people all across our organization have complained about her. And we are a fairly new team because everyone previous quit and cited her as the main reason for them leaving.
Leadership is well aware. They’ve done everything they can to fire her. Problem is every time they get close, she finds a loophole and exploits it. They’ve also tried to have frank talks with her to apply elsewhere since she will not get raises or promotions, but she won’t leave.
My question is how to deal with this? I try stay in my lane and she blatantly ignores me 90% of the time so we’re in a Cold War. But as the “senior” on the team, a lot of people complain to me but don’t want to make a report to our boss. I feel like I’m gaslit to pretend everything is okay and work hard while she gets to create mayhem. Any advice on how to keep my sanity around someone awful who won’t leave??
It’s possible that the coming in late and leaving early are due to a medical accommodation, but there’s no legally-required accommodation that requires you to employ someone who is rude and doesn’t do their job.
Assuming you’re in the U.S., there aren’t any “loopholes” that force an employer to keep on an employee like you described. There’s only bad management.
You have a coworker who doesn’t do her job or does it poorly, is rude, and has driven away multiple people who cited her as their reason for leaving; your management has not done everything they can to fire her. They could just … fire her. So they’re the problem, much more than she is.
When people complain to you, you should say, “I see it too, and the best thing any of us can do is to raise the problems to Boss” or “I’m not the right person to bring this to; you’ve got to take it to Boss, since she’s the only one who can do something about it.”
Related:
no, it’s not ever “impossible” to fire people
why won’t my company fire my terrible coworker?
2. My coworker constantly makes gross phlegm-snorting noises
I work in an open-plan office where one of my colleagues, Peter, loudly snorts phlegm multiple times hourly. This is deeply unpleasant for those around him. Several colleagues, including myself, find it extremely off-putting, in my case to the point of nearly dry heaving when I hear it.
Others have confided in me that they feel the same way, but no one wants to be the one to say anything directly. Instead, they quietly message each other about how disruptive and gross it is. While I understand their hesitation, I decided to politely raise it with Peter myself privately. I sent him a message asking if he could please try to refrain from doing it in the shared workspace. He apologized and said he would try not to. Unfortunately, it resumed the very next day and continued. I followed up the next week, keeping the tone respectful, and again he apologized. However, the snorting continues as before.
At this point, it’s making the office environment quite unpleasant. I find myself having to retreat to spare meeting rooms to work in peace on days when it’s particularly “snorty.”
If I were to raise this with his manager, I expect the response would be that it’s a personal issue I need to resolve directly. Our HR department is located interstate and has historically been unresponsive and ineffective in general (a whole other story there!). I have little confidence that escalating the issue through either of them would result in any meaningful action. It’s clear this behavior is bothering multiple people, but no one else is willing to speak up, and my own attempts to resolve it directly have failed. I’m not sure what other options we have to address the issue, but it’s affecting our ability to work comfortably in the shared space.
Well, first, good for you for politely asking him if it’s something he can control, rather than just complaining about it in messages to coworkers! But at this point, you’ve asked him twice, he’s said he would try to stop, and … he hasn’t. It’s possible he really can’t control it, that it’s something medical, and that it would be unrealistic for him to, say, leave for the bathroom every time he has to do it. Some bodies just make gross noises, some much more frequently than others.
Given that, can you look for other solutions? Can you wear headphones? Get a white noise machine?
3. Why do I have to post a job when I already know who I want to hire?
Can you please explain the logic behind why HR makes us post jobs that we intend to fill internally? For example, I wanted to move one of my juniors to a senior role. In order to do this, I was told I had to post the senior position internally as well as externally, and I had to interview all internal candidates as well as at least one external candidate. To top it all off, the junior who was my intended promotee was auto-rejected immediately by the internal hiring software! He came to me upset and confused as he thought the promotion was his. My other juniors were interviewed and downhearted when they were rejected (since they believed it was an open opportunity, when it really wasn’t). I interviewed an external candidate who was great and I would have loved to hire, so I am sure she was upset and wondering if the interview went so well, why she didn’t get the position? It was such a massive waste of everyone’s time, there must be some sound reason behind this phenomenon.
Does HR really exist just to torture me?
Those sorts of rules are supposed to exist to prevent cronyism and ensure you’re really hiring the best person for the job, not just the person you know the best or like the most. But they only work when a company commits to the spirit of the policy, not just the letter of it — meaning that hiring managers genuinely consider all the candidates, not just go through the motions until they can hire the person they always intended to hire. Otherwise they’re not only ignoring the whole point of the policy, they’re wasting a bunch of candidates’ time and falsely getting their hopes up. It’s actually really crappy to those other candidates (as you saw in your process).
Related:
why am I interviewing people I know I’m not going to hire?
4. Separating an new hire’s skills from their personality
Someone who directly reports to me was hired while I was out on maternity leave. While I’m not opposed to this, as getting someone to fill a role can take a while, I’m not sure I would have hired this person. I’m still gauging if they have the skill set to do the job and can thrive in the environment, but meanwhile I’m having issues with their personality. They started three months ago and already have a reputation for being negative and complaining, something that I’ve also witnessed, and their tone and approach to things comes across as crass and abrasive at times. There are times when the negativity is draining. I don’t mind being asked questions about the job functions, but the constant complaints and gossip about people they work with (not in our department) is not enjoyable.
I have been tasked with evaluating this person leading up to the completion of their six-month trial period and am trying to separate their ability to do the job versus their personality. How much should the fact that I just don’t really enjoy working with this person, and it seems like others have similar feelings, impact my decision on if this person should be retained or not?
Reframe it from “personality” to “behaviors” — because these are behaviors, and they are problems. What specifically are they doing that’s creating a pattern of negativity and gossip and making it difficult for others to work with them? Those are work issues, and they’re legitimate to address in an evaluation, like other soft skills would be.
Ideally, before deciding not to retain them over it, you’d give clear and direct feedback about what needs to change — but if you’re only recently back from leave so haven’t had a chance to do that and are coming up on the end of their trial period and need to make a decision, it’s still legitimate to consider in your decision. (Any chance you can warn them about what needs to change and then extend the trial period by a month or two?)
5. What to say when declining an offer because of the health insurance
I work in a field/job I really enjoy for a variety of reasons, but a couple of months ago I saw a job posting that perfectly fit my skill set at an organization I really admire. I applied for the job, even though I had some concerns about whether I would ultimately enjoy it as much as the work I’m currently doing. During the application process, I figured there was about an 80% chance I would stay at my job.
Ultimately, I ended up getting an offer. When the reality that I could work at this organization sank in, suddenly it seemed much more attractive. I spoke with some of the folks I would be working with to get some of my questions answered, and with each conversation I was more and more excited about the position. I started to think that maybe I would accept, but I had one more thing to check — I’m chronically ill in a city where there are not a lot of specialists. I needed to make sure that I would still be able to get care with their coverage. I reached out to HR and they provided me with info on the plans. Only two of my six providers were covered, and the deductible and out-of-pocket max were significantly higher than my current plan. I checked the marketplace and the closest I could find to adequate coverage was a plan that would cost $7,800 per year with worse benefits than my current plan (meaning I’d probably need $10k+ over my current salary just to break even). I ultimately decided I couldn’t accept the job and sent in a polite and gracious email that evaded the question of why I was rejecting it.
Should I have told them that health care was the dealbreaker? The pay they offered was also lower than my current pay, but that was obviously more negotiable. I knew the top end of the range for this position though, and it wouldn’t have been enough to make up for the health care deficit. I’m really bummed that this was the outcome and I imagine they will have questions, but it feels crazy to say, “I’m sick and your health coverage is bad!”
You’re not obligated to share your reason, but there can be value in employers hearing their health care coverage is deterring good candidates. Even leaving aside the issue that most of your doctors weren’t covered (which they might figure was just an unfortunate anomaly), explaining that the deductible and out-of-pocket max are significantly higher than your current plan and would amount to a pay cut might put some pressure on them to take another look at their insurance benefits (which wouldn’t help you, but could help people there in the future). It would also open the door for them to offer you a larger salary to make up for it (which, if they really wanted you, could have been higher than the top of the range you were assuming was the limit). There can be issues with accepting that kind of offer (like whether it means you’ll have an impossible time getting raises in the future because you’re already over their range for the role), but either way, it’s useful info to offer them if you want to.
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