It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. My coworkers think I left a bad Glassdoor review, but I didn’t
I work at gossipy, small, family-owned, white collar business. We have about 40 employees, many of whom have been here for decades. I have been with the company for about a year and a half in an entry-level position (this is my first job out of college). I recently put in my two weeks’ notice as I got a job elsewhere with a higher title and salary. A few days after I put in my notice, a negative Glassdoor review appeared online for my current company. It complains about every aspect of the company, from the dress code to the technology to the culture to the people.
This is the only Glassdoor review for this company, and so everyone in the office noticed immediately and are trying to figure out who could have posted it. I am the only employee who has quit in the last six months, and the job title and length of time employed that the Glassdoor review listed matches my qualifications exactly. So of course, people assume I wrote it.
While I agree with pretty much everything the review mentioned, I’m not an idiot! I’m not going to trash the place I still need to work at for the next week and a half. Furthermore, I really do want to leave on good terms. Since I’ll be in the same field in my new job, I don’t want this Glassdoor review to sour my relationship with my current coworkers.
No one has accused me directly of leaving the review, but whenever it’s brought up and I’m around people shush each other or talk quieter, and another employee told me flat out his supervisors think I wrote it. How can I clear my name (convincingly) without sounding like I’m guilty/paranoid since no one’s asking me about it directly?
Talk to your gossipiest coworkers and say this: “I’ve heard people talking about that Glassdoor review, and I think some people might think it’s me. It’s not. I’d never leave a review like that. I want to leave here on good terms. If you hear people talking about it, can you make sure they know it’s not me?”
Also, talk to your manager and address it head-on: “This is awkward to bring up, but I’ve heard a bunch of gossip this week that someone left a negative review of the company on Glassdoor. Since I’m leaving, I’m worried that you might wonder if it was me — so I wanted to tell you directly that it’s not! I’ve really valued my time here and I hope to stay on great terms with you and with the company. I’d never leave a review like that.”
2. Giving negative feedback in an open office
I work in an large open plan office. The open plan model is not entirely bad given the semi-collaborative nature of what we do, but I’m struggling with its implications for giving and receiving feedback. Our manager regularly walks around the office giving people feedback on their work. As we can’t use headphones, I’ve often overheard critical feedback of others work that wasn’t my business to know. Recently I had to let my manager know that I might have made a mistake that I wasn’t sure how to fix. As the manager’s desk is part of the open plan set-up, a bunch of people heard this conversation. Some of them asked me about it later, which was awkward.
Do you have any advice on how to deal more discreetly with the manager or other staff when there’s negative or sensitive information to be communicated? Email is not an option because management believes it’s most efficient to have most of the several dozen-person department share one email account.
Well, that bit at the end says something pretty significant about your management’s thinking around privacy and discretion (it says that they are loons).
Ideally, the way this should work is that people have regular one-on-one meeting with their manager, and those meetings take place in a conference room or another private area. (It’s pretty essential that managers have private work space because the nature of the job means having lots of conversations that shouldn’t be overheard, but if that’s not happening, then they at least should be making regular use of conference rooms.) Giving out feedback by walking around can work when something is minor; it’s not a good way to do it for bigger-picture items, more complicated development conversations, or feedback that’s critical.
While it doesn’t sound like that how your managers operate, it’s possible that you could move them more in that direction by asking for a standing weekly or biweekly meeting to check in on projects and get input and feedback, and then suggesting you do those meetings in a private space.
3. Replacing an employee who’s overpaid
I would like to replace an employee who is overpaid for her position. I inherited this employee from a former manager who hired her two years ago. Our business revenue has declined dramatically in the past 12 months, and I know I could hire someone to do the same job for about $10,000 less per year and $12,000 less insurance per year. Saving $20,000 more or less would really help towards our budget.
Should I ask her if she would be willing to take this much less in order to keep her job or just go ahead and let her go for financial reasons? If she chooses to keep her job, she will no doubt look for another job and be very unhappy about this change and could possibly sabotage her computer because she is in charge of billing and accounts receivable. (I don’t have any particular reason to suspect she would do that; I’m just worrying that a disgruntled employee with this type of job might mess things up. Just my paranoia.) However, I feel guilty about letting her go just because she is overpaid and we need the money. Can you help me decide what to do that is best for her and best for us?
If you’re sure that you can hire someone good enough for what you need for much less money (which is something you should research carefully before taking any action), and you’re committed to lowering the salary of the position, the best thing to do is be up-front with her about the situation. You could offer her two options to choose from: staying in the job with the lower salary (acknowledging that you know this would be a blow and you understand completely if that makes no sense for her), or transitioning out of the job with X months’ severance pay at her current salary. This gives her some control over the situation rather than you deciding for her and is more likely to leaving her feeling like she was treated reasonably well, despite the circumstances. (And offering severance makes it easier for her to choose the second option if she really doesn’t want the first.
If you know her to be responsible and trustworthy, I wouldn’t worry about sabotage; that’s not a common response to this type of situation, especially when people feel they’ve been treated with respect and dignity. If you did have some specific worry about her in particular, then I wouldn’t recommend the first option, but it doesn’t sound like that’s the case.
For what it’s worth, though, there might be a bigger picture question here for you: Saving $20,000 is about $1,666 a month. If that’s going to make a major difference in your budget, you probably need to be looking at bigger cuts in other areas too.
4. My coworker falls asleep at his desk
I work at a software development group and one of my colleagues occasionally falls asleep at his desk. He’ll be asleep anywhere from five minutes to 20 minutes. We work at cubicles in an open-ish concept office, so it’s not like he can hide behind an office door. It doesn’t happen every day, but it’s happened at least five times over the past two months and I’m concerned that someone (our manager) will come by and see him. Other people work in our section and must also see that he’s sleeping.
Is the best approach to pretend like it’s not happening? I’ve always ignored it. I have no authority over him and it’s not my place to call him out. However, is there a better response when I see he’s sleeping at work? (Aside from “accidentally” creating a loud noise to wake him.) It’s getting increasingly weird to work near someone who is sleeping.
For some background, he’s slightly senior to me, but I don’t report to him. I just don’t want to see him get in trouble for something entirely avoidable. We have a meditation/quiet room at work, so if he really did need to sleep there’s a place he could go.
If he’s falling asleep that often, he probably has some idea that it’s happening. I don’t think you need to alert him or wake him each time it happens. If you were senior to him, you’d have an obligation to say something to his boss. If he were a peer, I’d suggest you first talk to him (“I noticed you’ve been falling asleep at your desk — is everything okay?”). But given that he’s senior to you, yeah, I’d go on ignoring it. (The other option would be to say something to your boss — “hey, I’ve noticed Fergus falling asleep at his desk a lot and I’m worried about whether he’s okay” — but it sounds like you specifically want to avoid that.)
5. If I think I’m being fired, should I just stop going in?
I have not been working very long. When I started, training was very foggy. I had the training pay rate, which was minimum wage. Well, I had no idea for the longest time if I was off training, so I asked after two months. I was told I had to do training in another location, so I did. I completed my training and went back to my old location. About three months later, the manager said to me very indirectly that she was putting me on probation and she had to take me off training because she could not keep on training forever. That was all she said, with no feedback on what I could improve on. Well, that was two months ago and now I see that she took me off the schedule as of November 4th, but I am still working opening and closings until then. She has said nothing; she just took me off the schedule, no feedback, no being direct, and everything all over the place.
I do not feel like going in to work tomorrow. Should I write her an email saying that if I am terminated, it makes no sense to still go in? Or should I just go in and complete my work? I have felt disrespected here and that this has been handled very unprofessionally. Is this the way most companies work? I am still new to the workforce, as I have been off raising kids for a while. This is my first job back in and I wonder if this is the way things are and have changed since I have last been in the workforce.
It’s not how professional jobs typically work, but it’s definitely true that some retail and food service jobs will just take people off the schedule rather than having a direct conversation. That might be what’s happening here — or there could be some other reason for it, like a simple mistake.
Emailing your boss to say that it doesn’t make sense to work the rest of the week if she’s firing you is a pretty aggressive move, especially if it turns out that that’s not what she’s doing. Why don’t you just ask her directly? When you see her next at work, say this: “I noticed that I’m not on the schedule after the 4th. Do you still plan on scheduling me?” (And if you won’t see her in the next day, call or email to say that instead.)
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coworkers think I left a bad Glassdoor review, negative feedback in an open office, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.