Good Job is Slate’s advice column on work. Have a workplace problem big or small? Send it to Laura Helmuth and Doree Shafrir here. (It’s anonymous!)
Dear Good Job,
My best friend “Mabel” changed jobs about five years ago. She was really loving it, until last year, when she got a new boss, and things went downhill pretty quickly. From all the stories she would tell me, I kept encouraging her to look for a new job, mainly because her boss sounded like a very hostile, vengeful person that not only made Mabel’s life hell, but put the stability of her job at risk. Mabel has two young children, and her husband travels a lot for work, so I know Mabel is going at it alone a lot. I offered any assistance I could—sending her leads on jobs, offering to look at her resume, even offering to watch her kids if she had interviews. But, she would never follow up. She kept saying that, even though she was unhappy, she still had flexibility, which she needed.
Well, three weeks ago, Mabel was fired for some completely arbitrary reason. She likely has no recourse as an at-will employee. She is absolutely beside herself and in a deep black hole—and taking it out on me. Every day she’ll send text messages about how she’s a failure and worthless, and if I don’t respond, or respond with some canned answer because at this point I’m out of advice, she’ll text something like, “Are you even listening to me, do you care?” When I reiterate the ways I can assist, she ignores it. When I asked, “What can I do to help,” I got no answer. But, the woe-is-me texts still continue. Finally, a few days ago, I sent her a text: “Mabel, I love you, and I am here when you are ready to let me know how I can be there for you, but until then, I’m obviously not giving you the responses you are looking for so please stop sending me these texts that I can’t answer.”
Now, it’s radio silence. Was I wrong to send that text? Where do I go from here? Do I send a “just checking in” text? Text her husband (who I’m fairly close with) to see how she’s doing? I don’t want to abandon her, but I just didn’t see how we were getting anywhere!
—I Swear You’ve Got a Friend in Me
Dear Friend,
Getting fired can be devastating. Mabel is just a few weeks out from losing her job, and she is probably still traumatized from a year with a hostile boss. It’s time to stop texting and start talking. Give her a call and ask to see her in person. Take her to lunch, go on a walk, ask to join her while her kids play at a playground, suggest anything you think she would enjoy. It sounds like she was hoping for sympathy rather than advice, so offer that to her. It seems that your way of dealing with pain is to try to find ways to fix things—tell her that. You felt helpless because you wanted to help her. Tell her you’re available for venting and distractions.
At some point, hopefully soon, Mabel will be ready to pick herself up and start a job search. And that’s when your advice and problem-solving skills will be more welcome and effective. When you share ideas, tell her explicitly that you’re switching from sympathy-friend to fix-it-friend, and tell her you can switch back again whenever she needs. Please don’t keep score about all the times she didn’t follow up on your earlier advice about how to get out of her bad work situation. Terrible bosses can be demoralizing and incapacitating. She’s grieving now, but she’ll soon have more time to think about her career, follow up on your offers to help, and be a better friend.
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Dear Good Job,
I’m a library middle manager and supervise a small team. One of them is struggling in some areas but is making good, notable progress. Another is one of the best employees I’ve supervised in six years of management.
The problem is my boss doesn’t think anyone is good enough. We’ve been plagued with under staffing lately and everyone is working hard to keep our heads above water. I told my boss that we needed to give everyone a boost during a staff meeting and generally let them know that we see how hard they’re working while we’re understaffed and let them know how much we appreciate them. She refused! Not only did she refuse, she had a laundry list of (bad) reasons why my staff wasn’t good enough. How do I get my boss to see the value of my staff and respect their growth? Her lack of respect made me lose respect for her.
—Missing Mutual Respect
Dear Missing Mutual Respect,
Wowza, that is terrible management. You gave your boss excellent advice about how to improve morale and productivity. Her contempt is a relationship-killer, and you are right to lose respect for her. You don’t say this explicitly, but I think you can assume she blames you for problems she sees with your staff. There’s no easy or quick way to improve this lousy situation, but you’re right to try.
Your boss doesn’t sound like someone who appreciates new information that contradicts her beliefs. If you disagree with her directly, she’ll just get more committed to her opinion about your staff. Instead, pick a few of her complaints that aren’t completely wrong and tell her how you are addressing them. It’ll feel gross, but give her credit for pointing out the problem, let her know you take it seriously, and ask for her advice about how to solve it. For an even higher degree of difficulty, see if you can nudge her toward “hire more people” as the solution.
The other thing you can do is keep pelting your boss with positive news about your team. You mention that one of your staffers is making real progress; let your boss know about every step of it. Use them as an example of how you are helping your team understand their shortcomings and improve their performance. Document all of their successes and share them with your boss in your regular meetings and in writing. Send her memos with updates on your team’s progress. When you praise one of your staffers for a specific accomplishment, do it over email and CC your boss. I’m sure it would be more pleasant to avoid your boss, but over-communicating is the best way to earn her respect, or at least get her to aim her contempt in a different direction.
Dear Good Job,
I can’t stand the inane small talk that happens at the start of meetings. I work in a field that bills hourly and works on tight deadlines, and I find these several minutes of small talk in every meeting inefficient (and it feels unethical to bill clients for time that’s wasted). It’s especially infuriating when I get dragged into meetings that could’ve been an email, and even more of my productive working time is taken away from me.
I feel like the office grump when I don’t indulge a bunch of small talk in meetings, and I feel like the only adult in the room when I try to get a meeting back on topic. It seems like I’m the only one who actually cares about efficiency, but maybe that’s because I take deadlines more seriously than anyone else in my office (including the owners). How can I be friendly with colleagues without spending 10 minutes at the top of every meeting talking about nothing?
—You Can’t Bill for Small Talk
Dear You Can’t Bill for Small Talk,
I’ll keep this answer short to avoid wasting your time: I doubt you’ll be able to stop people from chit-chatting, but you might be able to get out of participating. It sounds like your meetings need an agenda, with a timeline and specific subjects allotted a certain number of minutes. Tell the owners you’re concerned about wasting billable time, and ask them to make meetings tighter and more scheduled. An agenda can do the “hey people, let’s pay attention now” work for you. If everybody else wants to build in small talk-time, ask to put it at the beginning or end of the agenda as an optional portion of the meeting. If you know they’re going to blow the first 10 minutes on sports and the weather, you can just come in, with a great-to-see-you smile, at 10 past the hour. If it’s the final 10 minutes of the meeting, act like you’re sorry to go but darn it, you’re on deadline. It should be easier for you to be friendly with your coworkers in other situations if you’re not feeling trapped by their chatter.
—Laura
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I’m in the process of divorcing my husband, after less than a month of marriage. We dated happily for five years previously, but our situation is truly what “irreconcilable differences” are made for. He’s against the divorce, but I just want out. I’ve moved in with a friend. I’m trying to get a place for myself, but I wasn’t financially prepared for this and it’s tough. I know that my parents and family would love to give me a place to stay, help with attorney fees, and take care of me, but it comes with strings. My mom is the most gossipy person you can imagine. My cousin had an out-of-state abortion: She was getting calls from opinionated aunts within six hours. My brother’s embarrassing dick surgery, an aunt’s firing: It’s all fair game.
