Am I Right to be Annoyed by This? (Workplace Situation, No Drama Yet)

In My Humble Opinion
1

The receptionist where I work, let’s call her Cindy, is taking a lot of time off, at least in my opinion.

Normally, I don’t involve myself in whether my coworkers have a sufficiently strong work ethic. But receptionist relief relies almost completely upon myself and another coworker, let’s call her Annie. There’s not much phone work, because everyone in the office of about thirty people has direct lines for most of their calls. Most of the calls to the front desk are from salespeople, people having trouble with the restaurant website, and people with restaurant complaints. The phone also involves buzzing in delivery folks (Fedex, mailpeople, UPS, etc.) and people coming in for interviews and presentations and whatnot. It’s not a busy job. In an average hour you can expect maybe seven calls. But the post has to be manned (or rather womanned) 8-5 everyday.

Cindy also works doing roughly the same type of work I do. This means that the beginning week of each month is especially busy, processing invoices for the last month. It’s called “closing week”.

Well, Cindy was off twice this closing week, Tuesday and Wednesday. Annie and I split the days between ourselves sitting at the front desk as usual when this happens. I should also mention that at the front desk I have no access to my email or my Excel files, so what I can do of my job is somewhat limited to plain paperwork, which I have plenty of. But still, it’s making my regular work back up.

Well, okay, just work the front desk the two half days and then try to catch up. Fine.
I work the whole Thursday at my desk, fine. Today is Friday. I work through the morning, and then at noon, get my coat to go out to lunch.

But as I pass the front desk, I see Annie is sitting there. “Where’s Cindy?” I ask. “She’s not here today. Didn’t she tell you?” Annie says.

Well, I just express some surprise that I didn’t know, while inside, I just feel my innards collapsing. I tell Annie that I’ll just run and pick-up a sandwich, and eat it at the front desk, because when Cindy’s gone, I relieve Annie at 12:30 for the afternoon shift. I have some emails to get out. Annie says, no problem.

So I get my sandwich, leave it at the front desk, go back to my desk to do the emails, and by the time I get them out, I owe Annie a half hour of relief time. Annie says not to worry about it.

While we’re changing stations, I casually ask if Cindy is having family problems. Annie says no, she’s just taking time off. I say archly, “During closing week?” Annie just shrugs.

So now I sit here, during closing week, watching my workload get bigger because I can only do a half-assed job chained to the front desk. The boss is already pissed at me because a certain large vendor’s bills became overdue because I couldn’t keep up with it while the new software was screwing up so bad. The vendor started threatening to put us on hold. It’s not exactly my fault this happened, but I still want to straighten it out before the end of the year. And I can’t do anything about it now because I’m sitting here. For the third goddamn day this week.

I keep hinting that Annie and I shouldn’t be the only ones in the office relieving Cindy, but that’s going nowhere. Nobody wants to sit at the front desk taking customer complaints.

It also frankly bugs me that Annie takes the whole front desk situation so serenely. “Oh, I don’t mind being up here.” Great. So, I’m the bitch then.

I could go on, but I’m complaining about missing work, and that’s what I doing as I’m typing this into the Dope. I think I’m right to be pissed though. I don’t want to get Cindy into trouble, because I personally like her. But I’m still pissed about this though.

2

Whether you like Cindy or not, she’s not doing her job. Taking three days off in one week is definitely impacting yours and Annie’s workload for the worse. You’re justified in going to your immediate boss and making your concerns known. If she loses her job, not your problem OK? It’s on her to show up when she’s scheduled barring an emergency. It’s nice Annie is dependable, but you two really need a third person at the job to pitch in.

3

Are these vacation days or just not showing up for work or something else?

4

In a world of rational people, you would tell your boss that you’re taking long than you should clearing up the vendor thing because you had to cover the front desk three times this week. After that it would be up to your boss to deal with it or not – if they want to pay you to cover for Cindy instead of your other work, that’s up to them, right?

Now, I don’t know how rational your boss is, and whether they tend to shoot messengers with bad news or would be angry about anyone complaining about Cindy because they’re sleeping with her, or whatever else may be going on, so I can’t say that telling your boss that is the best thing to do. But it’s what you should be trying for, after manuvering around whatever emotional reactions your boss has.

5

In the calendar book at the front desk which records requested time off days (which is here so the receptionist can tell visitors if someone is in the office or not), Cindy has a total of 21 planned days off for the entire year. I have a total of 11. Mine should be really be fourteen because I took off three sick days without planning; two for sciatica, and one for a cold.

We have a weird ‘hours worked’ system that determines how much paid time off we have. The deal works out to be about two weeks vacation with five sick days. I have no idea if Cindy is just being docked for the extra time off or what. I don’t really care. If I didn’t have to sit half days at the front desk, I wouldn’t care how many days Cindy takes off. That’s between her and HR.

This whole thing is ruining my day because Cindy knows as well as anyone that this is closing week, and all that that entails. I can’t imagine why she would think that three days off on the first week of the month would be just dandy.

6

It isn’t completely clear but if you could get all your stuff onto the workstation where Cindy sits, would that alleviate some of the pressure? I’m asking because everywhere I worked, there was a way to get your profile onto every other networked computer.

My criterion for whether I should worry about something at work was, is it in my control, and am I still getting paid the same amount whether I do this or not? Like, if your bonus depends on whether you get a certain amount of work done and your half-days at Cindy’s job are impacting that, then yes, get annoyed, and say something about it.

7

On the one hand, if this is the first time this has ever happened, the best action politically might be to live with it for a day or two.

Who designated only a limited number of people for being the back up person for Cindy? Are you and Annie the only women in the pool of people that could have been chosen from? Are you in the U.S., or somewhere else that this could be treated as sexism? For that matter, if you were fired, could you get unemployment if you could show that your firing was unfair?

You should probably let your boss know the consequences of what is going on.
You might want to say something like “Hey, because Annie and I are required to work half days as the front door receptionist whenever Cindy is out of the office, this week I have been unable to get work done on project XYZ, since Cindy has been out x days. If we could get other people in rotation as Cindy’s backup, my work (and Annie’s) would not be as badly disrupted when Cindy is unable to come in to work.”

Now, keep a copy of that, and a copy of his response. Because if your boss doesn’t do anything, and this negatively affects you, you will need to haul these out to say “Hey, I told you this was a problem, and you didn’t do anything” And maybe “Hey, why are the only two people being used as Cindy’s backup the women in the office”

IMO, it’s between Cindy and her boss as to why she is taking time off during a known busy time period. But it’s between you and your boss as to why your work is what is suffering because of Cindy’s actions.

8

Here’s a way you can keep working on your stuff that’s on your own computer. Some windows computers have something called “remote desktop”. It’s a program which allows you to log into a remote computer and it’s like you’re actually on that other computer. So the reception computer can be a generic computer, but you would use remote desktop to log into the computer in your office. Then you could do your normal work when you’re sitting at the reception desk. When you go back to your office, you log back into your computer and keep working. Ask your IT department if they can set that up for you.

Or maybe you and Annie can be issued laptops, which would allow you to take your laptop to the reception desk when you have to work there.

9

This is my kneejerk reaction. A lot of people have an image in their minds that the person behind the front desk is a woman. It sucks for men who can’t get a job because they don’t fit that image, and for women who can’t get any other job.

But really, it just comes down to if you can talk to your boss.

10

Without knowing what’s going on in her life, you have no bleeping idea whether she thinks it’s just dandy or or instead is time necessary for her to deal with stress, family problems, medical issues, substance abuse, legal matters, etc., etc., etc., and frankly it’s none of your business, whether or not she chooses to share the details with you or with Annie.

Your inability to get your work done is a matter between you and your boss, and others have given suggestions there. Her time off is between her and her boss; keep your nose out of it, and don’t get your nose out of joint because you’re not privy to the details of somebody else’s life.

11

The reason I asked Annie if Cindy was having family problems is because I was trying to sound concerned if Cindy needed all these days off for a personal crisis, giving her the benefit of the doubt as to why she would leave us in the lurch. It sounds more polite than asking Annie, “Gee, why is Cindy screwing us over on closing week with this ditching work stuff?”

I would much rather that more people were available to relieve the front desk than go make noise about Cindy’s time off. Once the Big Boss had a “town hall” meeting about ways to improve the workplace. I stressed that we should have more backup people for the front desk. That meeting was more than a year ago, and nothing was done. So it isn’t like it hasn’t been brought up. If I mention the fact in passing, the guys get a pained look. So I’ve almost given up on that score.

It sucks. But there it is.

12

I was off work for 8 days due to bronchitis that landed me in the ED. Perhaps Cindy is very ill.

13

She seemed okay Thursday when she came in for one day.

14

It really sounds like the problem isn’t Cindy, it’s that an unjust amount of the desk-coverage work is being dumped on you. I would approach the boss and point out that this desk work is preventing you from working on the specific important projects, and inform him that when he puts you at that desk, he’s choosing to not have those projects progress. It’s up to him to choose what’s important - your projects getting done, or a re-examination about the policies of who get stuck as desk backup and how often.

Full disclosure - I know my boss won’t murder me for saying stuff like this. YMMV.

15

I don’t know Cindy, but I doubt she’s thinking to herself, “Imma take off a buncha days from work just to screw Two Many Cats.” Even if she’s laying out on the beach somewhere, that’s still between her and her employer.

If I were you, I’d ask your boss if there’s some way for you to work the desk while doing your other tasks. Maybe there’s a laptop you can use (or one can be secured for you).

16

That doesn’t mean anything, necessarily. People can get sick suddenly. Or they can have accidents, injuries, etc. These kinds of things happen all the time.
It could also be something personal that she want the rest of the workplace to know about.

I’d say wait and find out WHY she’s not coming in before blaming Cindy. It sounds like it’s the boss who’s not doing his job in getting adequate back-up.

17

Annie has it even worse than I do. Every morning she has to sit up at the desk from 8 to 9:30 until Cindy comes in. I’m supposed to cover Cindy’s lunch hour, but Cindy mostly eats at her desk so I’ve lucked out there. I’ve offered to split the morning shift with Annie, just to make things more fair. But Annie always says, “Oh, I don’t mind sitting up there.”

That’s also what she says when I suggest we both go and ask for more backup people.

18

I agree, with what info we have. Though I don’t know the specifics. But then again, I’m taking a lot of leave right now, so may be biased. Leave is part of my compensation, and I’m at the point if I don’t take it, I lose it. This happens at the end of the year, so now is a time people take off. Also can use those days for Christmas shopping now.

Front desk is something that always has to have someone there, but that should never be used as excuse to prevent someone from taking leave they’ve earned. It’s the same as taking away part of their salary, IMO. Planning around busy times is ideal, but would you have been complaining if she was taking a day off every week in July or any other time of year?

If your workplace can’t handle people taking their earned leave (if, indeed, this is what’s happening), then they need to hire more people. I have real problem with workplaces that include vacation days as part of the perks, but then either don’t ever let people take them or guilt them for taking them.

19

As I mentioned, according to the calendar book, Cindy has taken six more days than the two weeks and five sick days that our paid time off normally allows. They were approved days off, or they wouldn’t have been in the book. I don’t know if she was reimbursed for those six days or not. I don’t care.

I wouldn’t even be that put out about these three days this week if it were just a one time thing. But even beyond the six extra days, Cindy often has these surprise doctor or dentist appointments, or school meetings for her four teenagers, usually on Fridays, and she leaves at 2 pm. Earlier in the year, it seemed to be happening every other week. And honestly, I would rather cover a sixty minute lunch break every day than lose a half day of work every other week.

This could all be alleviated if there were more backup people, and we have folks that could pitch in. But everyone has an excuse why they can’t. There’s one coworker who filled in when Cindy, Annie, and I had to be in the same meeting together. And when the meeting ran long, this person let everyone know what a sacrifice that was on her part. We never asked her to fill in again.

I’m making this sound more acrimonious than it is. I like Cindy personally, and we’ve had some great talks together.

But I can’t just up and miss a half day’s work each time her kid’s braces need adjusting.

20

Why isn’t your boss handling this?