General Etiquette > All In A Day's Work
Now that we can talk more freely...
Danismom:
BG: I am leaving my current job for a new one **yea** ;D It is a promotion and an awesome opportunity at another company. My boss is supportive and encouraging. She and I have always gotten along well and would probably be pretty good friends. However, I tend to put some distance into the relationship because of professionalism. /BG
After giving my notice and then making the announcement (at her behest) to the rest of the small department a few days later, she commented privately to me that she hoped we would have time together to talk about our department. She hopes I will share my insights with her "now that we can talk more freely". She knows that Annoying Coworker has been a thorn in my side for most of my time at current job. She knows I can hardly stand him. I try to avoid him or work around him in general. She also knows that the easiest way for a coworker to get majorly under my skin is to not make care of patients. Lie to me? I can deal with it. Be rude and unprofessional behind closed doors. I'll just avoid you as best I can. But not take care of patients? You will get blasted with both barrels. So, historically speaking, I've only gone to her about the stuff that involves direct patient care. She knows the times that I feel like he's really missed the mark on patient issues. She knows the times that have involved staff on my units since I've had to help clean up the mess for the department.
Now that she wants to talk "more freely", how do I best talk about some of the soft skills issues?
Here are some of my biggest gripes:
1) He's the one with the incessant throat clearing, mucus snuffling behavior I've mentioned previously. That behavior has slowed down a lot but it has been replaced with belching -- loud, disgusting belching with no "excuse me".
2) Feeling trapped in our area with him. He's a short but large guy. We are now in cubicles with a narrow hall between them. Essentially in our area, he has the open space by the door and then around the corner is a short hallway between the other 4 employees. I'm in the back of the 4. If he comes around into the hallway to talk to any of us and stands there in the hallway, we are trapped. He is large enough that he blocks the hallway and he is either oblivious or intentional but either way, he won't let you out until he's done talking about whatever he wants to talk about.
3) He interrupts professional conversations in our office area and completely changes the subject. e.g.
Danismom to Good coworker: Patient xyz came in as a trauma last night. His mom was on her way here from out of town He ended up on your unit and is critical. Would you...
AC: Danismom, did you get admin's email about our monthly reports? What did you think of that?
Danismom: Just a minute. We are talking about a patient issue. So, patient xyz...
AC: Well, I was trying to figure out where to report this piece...
It keeps going and he won't stop until we answer his conversation. Then we can go back to what we were working on before he butted in.
4) He's loud. Our cubes don't go all the way to the ceiling so there is a lot of open space. He speaks English fine but was raised outside the country and another language is his primary. When he's on the phone, he's practically yelling in either language. It is hard to shut him out when he's speaking English. When he's speaking another language, it is next to impossible. I put in earplugs but I have to turn them up to blaring to drown him out so I can focus. A lot of times, I just end up leaving the office to do other work and come back later.
5) He's not careful with private information. He carpools with his wife and she picks him up every day. We deal with sensitive medical information protected by HIPAA. She routinely moves the guest chair in his cube and looks over his should while he charts/writes his reports that contain this information. I have previoulsy reported this to my boss but it continues. He has done it so that other members of the community have been able to see his work as well but I think that part has stopped after I complained.
6) He's lazy. He usually arrives on time now (which is a big change over the past 2 years). As soon as he arrives he does a variety of other things including getting his breakfast. He doesn't really start to work for about an hour or so. There was one day when I noticed (as I came and went) that he was late getting in by 30 minutes, then ate breakfast. Then he took a 3 hour lunch with a community member. It drove me bananas because he also sat in the office for a long time not doing anything. I've seen him sleeping at his desk!
7) He doesn't pay attention and expects to be catered to. He will routinely not read emails and then just expect someone to tell him the information. We had a department meeting last week which was a good example. He pestered one of my coworkers about where the meeting was going to be and what did he need to bring. The information was all in an email from boss. He couldn't be bothered to pull it up and read it himself. Similarly he will read one email and start replying to it rather than reading the entire thread first. He came around asking me about diving up some tasks one day. I finally told him to go read the rest of his emails as the 7 tasks he was trying to divide up had already been taken care of. There were several emails discussing the division and he just needed to do 2 tasks.
8) He's too touchy feely. Boss is aware of this and it is being dealt with by HR. Boss may not be aware that this is one of the original sources of my distaste for AC. He continues to try to develop a "close" relationship with my children against my wishes. When I first started at current job, I had an infant daughter. One day, I needed to drop something off and I brought her with me. He kept reaching around me to get to her. I bodily put myself between them because I didn't want him touching her -- just something about the way he was doing it. He wouldn't stop so I quickly exited. Just as recent as a couple of weeks ago (almost 5 years since that first incident), my 2 kids (now almost 5 and 3) were at the office with DH dropping off a coke for me. As soon as they came in, AC was trying to get them to come over to him. He offered them candy and tried to get them to give him affection (hugs, sit on his lap). It really creeps me out. I won't let my children anywhere near him and I make them turn down any candy he tries to offer. It is like Chester the mol3ster come to life.
9) Boss is aware, I think , of the many times he's yelled at me or my coworkers. Still it all happens behind closed doors. At our last department meeting, he was rolling his eyes, shaking his head, and raising his eyebrows at anything I had to say.
I'm really glad to leave this guy behind. Boss knows there are major problems with him. I think a big part of the problem is that boss's office is separate from ours so she doesn't endure his behavior on a daily basis. But as soon as I told boss that I was leaving, she immediately started apologizing for how bad our department has been lately. "It's been in a tailspin and nothing I do seems to make it any better". I know she realizes he's a big part of the problem. Many of these things are tough to document from an HR perspective though. I doubt you can get written up for belching. Most of this is unprofessional but hard to make a paper trail out of. I should note that he's an ethnic minority and would probably not hesitate to sue for discrimination if he were fired which means she needs a great paper trail. I only say that because he's already thrown the word "harassment" out at a colleague that was just asking him to do his job.
LeveeWoman:
Now that she wants to talk "more freely", how do I best talk about some of the soft skills issues?
I'd figure out a way to talk about everything you listed. This guy is a walking nightmare.
emeraldsage85:
Has anyone else complained about this guy? I think everyone in the department needs to document what is going on and complain to your boss.
gramma dishes:
She said "freely". I'd take her at her word.
All the things you mentioned are important, although since your children won't be exposed to him ever again (hopefully) I don't know that you need to include that part other than possibly mentioning that you were uncomfortable about the way he was around them.
Danismom:
I think almost everyone has complained in some way, shape or form. The problem is that these things are generally hard to document. The guy is a grade A jerk but does a decent job with a significant section of our patient population. He gets enough kudos to offset some of the complaints. My boss is also getting better about trying to save the world. She tends to believe that if she just approaches it right, everything will change and be okay. This has resulted in her giving up a lot of her authority and letting a lot of things slide. She wants everything to be okay so bad that she'd rather pretend like it is. She's only recently started to be willing to see the problems.
He just never gets it. He's a master of the non-apology. I'm sorry if you were upset. Personally, I've called him on this before and he doesn't even understand that it's a non-apology! He's actually said before that if anyone is mad at him that he knows the problem is with them because he knows he's okay. He has that much self awareness ::)
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