One of my cow-orkers (I shall name him Jimmy) is quite immature, does not deal with stress well, and has thrown several tantrums in the workplace (I have witnessed at least five). Nobody addresses his behavior, nobody holds him accountable for it. Everyone just smiles nervously and glances at each other with a here-we-go-again expression until Jimmy calms down or leaves the area.
Yesterday’s stunt affected me directly and I am tired of acting like it is OK.
It was just Jimmy and me working together all day yesterday. Near the end of the day, a sizeable, unexpected chunk of work was dropped in our laps; work that had to be done immediately. When Jimmy, who was already mentally checked out for the day and ready to leave, saw this he imploded. “I’m not doing this! Bullshit! I nead to go!”
Me (calmly): “You can’t leave, we have to get all this done.”
Jimmy: “Fuck this! I have someplace I have to be!” (note that this was a full hour before Jimmy’s normal quitting time)
Me: “You have a job to do. What are you going to do, leave it all for me to do?”
Jimmy: “Yep”. Exit Jimmy.
Now, Jimmy and I have two different managers (our titles are different even though we essentially do the same job). I wrote an email to his manager informing him of the above, but have not sent it yet. I want to have a face-to-face conversation with Jimmy before I do so. I want to get his perspective while he is (hopefully) calm and a bit removed from the situation. If I am not satisfied that he acknowledges that he was wrong to leave, and that he will make some sort of effort to prevent future episodes, I will send the letter with a cc to my manager.
I’d like some Doper input, though. I’m sure some of you have thoughts on this.
mmm
I’d send it to the managers without talking to Jimmy first. Managing him is not what you’re getting paid for. I’d just state the facts, don’t mention the 5 previous meltdowns, don’t quote him directly, just a simple description that he protested the amount of work and left early, leaving you to do it all.
This situation never gets better. Well usually not, I could see it’s an unusual circumstance and possibly he’s overly stressed by additional factors. But it sounds like the kind of challenging that he plans to use again with increasing frequency.
I don’t know why you want to talk to Jimmy. Let his manager know, don’t make it your problem.
Corporate interpersonal dynamics can vary quite a bit, but I’d consider just following the chain of command and emailing my own boss and let her deal with Jimmy’s boss.
In any case – sending to own boss only, sending to both, or sending to one and cc:ing the other – I’m sure you know that you have to be careful how it’s worded. There’s a fairly fine line between just informing someone who ought to know about the situation and appearing to be either a tattletale or making excuses for not meeting a deadline. By which, I guess I mean that sometimes it’s better to just have a chat with your own boss before committing anything to writing.
If the problem is the erratic, aggressive, hostile behavior, I’d keep the focus on that and not make the leaving you to do the work become a red herring.
This is a pretty good point being subtly made here.
Officially, no one cares if you’re pissed off. Your emotional state is not a matter for corporate discipline.
If you have a complaint, it has to be based in impacts to the business. Did you in fact finish the last-minute pile-o-work within the specified unreasonable deadline? Then you have that much less to complain about. Because the job got done. The fact that you did 100% of it and Jimmy sloughed off is irrelevant to the fact that the job got done on time, and to satisfactory quality.
So don’t bitch about how unfair it is. Typically, leadership gives zero fucks about fairness.
Emphasize the actual impact to work quality or timeliness, if you can. If you can’t, your only likely approach would be a “hostile work environment” / “nascent workplace violence” angle. Don’t expect a rousing response from management. It ain’t really broke from their perspective as long as the work keeps getting done and they can’t get sued.
It is, if MMM’s emotional state increases the likelihood of him (or other productive employees) quitting. The employer may not get sued, but they suffer when good people evacuate because jerk employees are being tolerated. Maybe the work got done this time, but maybe next time, MMM puts in his two weeks’ notice…
This line of thought isn’t really accurate, most corporations would be happy to know that one employee was shirking work and others were picking up the slack because they pay money to keep the shirker on staff, in benefits and etc. If he’s not doing valuable contributions to the work he obviously is dead wood, and while most corporations carry a lot of dead wood most aren’t so stupid as to not care when dead wood is made known to them.
Not to mention team interpersonal dynamics do matter to most managers when it involves direct reports. Even if the work is getting done regardless, a bad worker isn’t good for a company. If the work could really be done without Jimmy then maybe that position doesn’t need to exist at all. That being said, OP was talking about a one off work dump, it’s possible Jimmy is otherwise productive most of the time.
Do talk to your manager and get their perspective on how to deal with Jimmy.
Also seriously consider talking with HR, if your company is large enough to have an HR. If you like, note that you are not lodging a complaint but that you have concerns about the behavior of a co-worker. Let them take it from there.
I would also start documenting.
HR (struggles to word this to not offend nice HR folks on the Dope) does take certain types of complaints seriously. Behavior that can create either a dangerous or hostile workplace falls into that bucket. It sounds to me like Jimmy could do both. HR cannot know about Jimmy unless folks tell them.
The entirely separate issue of whether Jimmy is getting his work done is between Jimmy and his manager. HR may eventually get involved in that as well, but you don’t need to worry about that. You should make sure that your manager knows that you were left with his work (you handled it - you’re a rock star) but that you would appreciate his or her help in managing the Jimmy situation moving forward.
Perspective of a long time manager from a large corporation, if that helps place my advice accordingly.
I wouldn’t speak to Jimmy first. Since he’s already shown himself to be a problem person, I wouldn’t trust him not to spin the facts around and report it to the bosses or whatever.
Also, I’m not sure about going to Jimmy’s boss yourself, even if your own boss is CC’d. I’m not sure but it seems to me your boss could take that as going over his/her head and not appreciate it.
So, I think going to your own boss may be the best bet. I would lay out the whole deal with Jimmy. If you limit it to only one incident or one part, that is all the boss will see and it will look like a one-time event or otherwise less than the ongoing, wide-ranging problem it is.
If you do that, the other consideration is discussing it with your boss “off the record,” which seems friendlier to your boss but also makes it like the discussion never happened, if your boss doesn’t do anything about it. If you send an email, you’ll have a written record of the discussion. That might annoy your boss but it also might make it more likely something is done about Jimmy.
Also, you might consider Jimmy’s work history. If he has a history of not keeping a job for long, maybe the best bet would be to just wait him out.
I understand your point, but in order to get the work done effectively and efficiently a strong measure of teamwork is necessary. I don’t think the bosses would be too thrilled with any of us abandoning the work (or each other), particularly when there is a hissy fit in play.
mmm
Right, but if you give them something concrete and simple (the work) and something abstract and complicated (his behavior), they will grab onto the easy thing and ignore the other. They will think fixing that will fix the problem: they will write Jimmy up for leaving the work, and next time he will have a hissy fit but stay, freaking out the whole time. You’ll still end up doing all the work and it will be even more miserable. Or he freaks out in some other situation that isn’t related to getting worked done. Then, when you document the issue, they will decide you just have a problem with Jimmy. You want one consistent narrative here, and it’s the behavior.
There’s also the real danger that if they make it about the work Jimmy will bring up some other superficially related incident–like when you left early on a slow Friday to help your mom who’d fallen and was in the hospital–and in the interest of making the whole thing go away, they will chide both of you and make a strict “No leaving early” policy.
The behavior is the problem. That’s what needs to be emphasized.
I agree it’s unnecessary to talk with Jimmy about this. That is a manager’s job. And you absolutely need to bring up his history of meltdowns. The manager needs to know this is not an isolated incident.
