TheKid and I have been dealing with presumptuous people lately, and we’re both wondering how you deal with them.
Her example: We have a standing date for the midnight release of the last Harry Potter movie. It’s with her friend, A. This friend has gone to every book release party, every opening night with us. They’ve grown apart over the past few years, this is one thing that brings them together. TheKid also has a friend, K. K is a johnny-come-lately to the whole Harry Potter phenomenon. She texted TheKid: “Oh Hell! My parents have decided we MUST go camping on the 15th! I am desolate! In tears! I so wanted to see the movie with youuuu!!!”
Uh, we never invited you?
Now, K is a clueless little twit. Sweet, but clueless. And completely exhausting after an hour or so. She thinks if she comes over, it’s automatically a sleepover. When I ask when do I need to take her home, she’ll say her parents will pick her up in the morning. My telling her “that doesn’t work for us, we have something to do”, she’ll just invite herself along. TheKid is nicer than I am, she will make excuses to get K to uninvite herself.
TheKid has already told K that the movie is a special ‘thing’ for us, K replied “The more the merrier!” She’s just not getting it, and I know she needs to be told point blank “You’re not invited”, but that would open up a whole new can of worms.
My example: I’m caught up on my work. I have looked for extra projects, and am in the middle of a few right now. All extra projects have been done at the behest of my supervisor. However, a few coworkers, having learned of my current status, think I should assist them. There is only one coworker I would be willing to assist, if my supervisor would allow it. She won’t. Today I opened up my mail to discover a bunch of work to do - not on my cases. WTF? I sent an email to my team asking who sent that work to me, received a response back from a coworker: “I’m really behind after my vacation and I know you’re looking for things to do. Helping me out would be appreciated; remember, we’re a team”.
Really?
Now, I do have the time to do her work, true. And it does help the team. But damn, that was ballsy. I’m of the opinion to just transfer the work back to her, letting our supe know of what happened, but our supe is a spineless weenie who would tell me to do it anyways. Then, when I ask if I could help other coworker, she’ll say no, again.
I don’t really have a solution, but I was just thinking about something kind of similar. I dealt with it by being pretty blunt.
I’ve had formal music training. In a mid-sized company where I worked, there was a girl who had formal voice lessons. A handful of other employees doodled with various instruments, but were self-admittedly not very good.
One day someone suggested that we all get together and jam. Someone else suggested that we perform at the next big company meeting. I was asked to organize all of this.
A week or so later I was assigned to get training in some godawful product. It took up all my time. I didn’t get home until about 9:00 every night, and I was drained of energy. I certainly didn’t have time to form a band, run rehearsals, and prepare for a “concert.”
I did call the singer and asked her what her thoughts were. After about .00001 seconds of discussion we agreed that trying to form something out of a very shallow talent pool was something that neither of us had the time nor inclination to do.
A few days before the big meeting, I got a company-wide e-mail from a secretary.
Her: “Come to the big meeting on Friday! Lunch will be catered, we will have two guest speakers, and the Company Band will entertain us!”
Me: “There is no Company Band.”
Her: “Yes there is, and they’re going to be awesome!”
Me: “Since I was in charge of putting this together, I can assure you that there is no band.”
Her: “Oh. But I told everyone that there was going to be one.”
Email response to Ballsy Coworker, CC (not BCC) to supervisor.
"Hey Ballsy,
Just wanted to let you know that unfortunately Supervisor has let me know I’m not to assist on other projects right now. He/She wants me focusing on my own cases for the time being. I know we’re a team, but Supervisor’s word is law!
Maybe you could talk to Supervisor about finding someone else who needs some work to help you out! I’m copying this email to Supervisor* so he/she’ll know what you’re talking about when you ask him/her.
Welcome back, I hope you had a lovely vacation!
YourName"
*this part is for if Ballsy is dumb enough to not notice the CC, and also to let Supervisor know that if he/she’s going to go spineless on you, you’ve got evidence of your previous orders, and it will be just a little embarrassing to change opinions now.
However, I will point out that I’m a tactless bitch when people are trying to back me into a corner. Too much history with that as standard procedure for family interactions has made my tolerance absolutely nil.
I thought we passed a moratorium on using letters as fake names in stories just a few weeks ago. Many people refuse to read the ones written that way and it detracts from the value of all of them.
I think with people like this, you need to be as blunt as you can (or your conscience will let you be). I’m really bad at this, too, especially with non-work situations. Clueless coworkers are a little easier to deal with because there are usually protocols or chains of command or other structures in place that you can refer to in order to explain why you won’t be doing what they want.
For a kid like K, you can be more gentle because she’s still at an age where she’s learning social behavior, but what about saying something like, “We’re sorry but our family needs to plan sleepovers in advance. Tonight won’t work for us because it’s such short notice, but how about a weekend next month?” Or, “We’re really sorry but we’ve planned to do just as a family this time. Maybe we can do together on [later date] instead.” So you’re not telling her to buzz off entirely, but you’re letting her know that there are steps to take (like scheduling) before she can tag along – she can’t just show up and expect to go too.
Rereading the OP, it also occurred to me that somewhere along the line, K may have had other friends who slept over at each others’ houses like it ain’t no thing (otherwise, I can’t think of a reason why a kid would automatically assume that if she shows up at your house during the day, she’s automatically staying the night…does she show up with a change of clothes and her toothbrush? Either way, what a weird kid.). So you could make a point of saying that in your family, sleepovers are special treats that need to be planned…or something (sorry, I’m sneak-typing this at work). Just something in a gentle but deliberate way to let her know that sleepovers aren’t the default get-together arrangement with your daughter.
Yes, actually; when it’s almost as easy to type Kay as it is to type K, I really appreciate it when people use actual names so my reading goes much more smoothly.
As for presumptuous people, you really have to be aware of and prepared to defend your boundaries with them. Be blunt, and be firm - “I’m sorry, but that doesn’t work for me. No, it still doesn’t work for me if you do blahblahblah. My answer is no.” What really gets under my skin about presumptuous people is when they mistake my politeness for being a pushover, and then I’m in a position where I have to get angry to get them to understand that no means no, and now everyone’s upset because they just wouldn’t listen to me. Jerks.
In tune with the OP, several months ago I had found myself with a few weeks gap in my regular workload so I mentioned that I had some spare bandwidth to folks in my department.
A few days later, one of the managers asked me if I would work with Joe and John, who were contractors, to help have a “employee presence” in their data warehouse loading tasks.
At the very first meeting I had with Joe, John, and their teammates, I realized that they were looking for a guy to be on call and babysit data loading processes at night. The job I was chosen for involved weekend hours and night hours.
When I say I have some open bandwidth, it implies during working hours
Fortunately my boss explained to them that I could support them, but would not be the on-call guy they were hoping for.
Slightly tangential:
I volunteer on a crisis line about once a week, and I am doing this work right now.
I just answered the phone to hear an authoritative voice say “I need to speak with the person who is responsible for your PSE&G [electric] bill…”
I have already spoken with these same scammers when they called my house, but this woman was giving me her demanding tone on our crisis line.
I calmly said “Do you realize that this is a suicide hotline?”
She insisted in saying “This is the phone number of blah blah blah [organization address], is it not?”
I said “You dialed the number of a suicide hotline in the state of New Jersey…”
(and I said it with great authority, and pleasure)
I don’t see tdn agreeing to the suggestion either, though. The fault there would be the person who suggested it in combination with the secretary for not checking first. Is it really normal for someone to make a suggestion for a musical group forming, then not check to see if it actually happened before booking them an informal gig? :dubious:
Sometimes there are folks that need that extra bit of “here, let me explain this to you in a calm and rational manner” to understand their blunder. With Kay in the OP, it would be easiest to sit down with her and explain some ground rules under the guise of “this is the way we do things in our house, which may differ from yours-- we don’t want any confusion in the future”. Kay appears to live with parents who are much more willing to have a loose schedule where friends can be added on for any event, so it’s not seen as a big deal for her to invite herself along; however, she could just be lonely and not have much of a home life to the extent where she’s willing to glue herself to your family to have some non-alienating socialization.
With the coworker, sometimes it can be easier to pin down the boss’ policy with the email suggestion that Lasciel gave; a succinct “though I appreciate the fact that you think I can handle it, Big Boss’ policy is that I don’t pick up other coworker’s assignments right now; I’m sure if you talk to Big Boss about it, s/he can find you someone who is able to work with on it” should be enough. CC’ing folks does work and alerts your boss to both the situation and the fact that you’re making them accountable for their policies. It doesn’t work with every boss, but it does at least notify the spineless ones that, if you’re going to set a policy that’s completely absolutely unbreakable for one person, it has to be completely absolutely unbreakable for all folks.
The suggestion was more than just forming the group, though, it was specifically to play at that particular event.
I think it probably largely depends on what exactly tdn said when he was asked to take it on during the initial conversation. Because of the fact that it wasn’t until a week later, when he was given a time-consuming project, that he called the singer and they had the conversation between the two of them about not doing it, it read to me like up until that point he hadn’t given any indication to anyone else that he wasn’t organizing it as discussed.
I agree that the secretary should have confirmed that it was a go before sending out the invitation to the meeting, and it seems weird that none of the other would-be musicians followed up either, but I don’t know that it was necessarily presumptuous of her depending on what happened prior to the decision a week later to ditch the idea.
You don’t say how old K is, but does she not have any parents? I’d think sleep-overs are something you’d discuss with parents. Give them a call and tell them your policy is that sleep-overs are planned in advance.
MissTake, you’re the MOM, right? Take all the strain off your daughter by acting mom-like and saying “no, Kay you’ve misunderstood, you are not invited. You can’t invite yourself to our family outings. Sleepovers are prearranged by having your mother call me to see if it’s convienient for my family. Please don’t do it again.”
She won’t be mad at your daughter, and being mad at someone else’s mom is normal in a kids’s life.
I’m guessing that there may have been a missed line of communication there; since we don’t know whether tdn had outright said “no”, gave a waffling “oh, uh, we’ll look into that”, or a “yes, sure”, we’re not entirely sure who’s more likely to blame for the confusion.
Yeah, not knowing his response to being asked to do it makes it hard to understand what happened. I just feel bad for the secretary who I think was trying to be supportive and is being used as an example of a presumptuous person when the story just didn’t come off to me as clearcut enough to show she was out of line, you know?
Some people operate in such a way that they think suggestions are statements of fact.
I had to talk my way out of a weird situation with such a person last year. She’s the new principal of my former high school, and they needed a teacher on short notice. One of my old high school friends now works at the school and she told the principal, “I’ll ask [gallows fodder] and maybe she’ll be interested in taking the position.” That’s all she said, and somehow, that got translated into the principal’s head as, “[gallows fodder] is going to work here.” And then she started calling me. It took me saying several times as firmly as possible, “I’m sorry, I already have a job, I’m not working for you,” before it sunk in. My friend later told me that the principal makes that kind of mistake all the time – someone will toss out an idea at a meeting, and the next thing anyone knows, the principal’s wondering why everyone is so behind on working on it. Because no one said they would do it in the first place, that’s why.
It sounds like tdn’s secretary is someone like that.
In that scenario, I’d put the onus on the suggestion maker as the presumptuous person, but the secretary definitely got the blame with tdn because she didn’t check to see whether the suggestion went through. It’s a tough call, though, because the story is a little unclear overall.
Gallows fodder, that’s got to be a weird situation to be in with a boss who assumes that any suggestion means it’s already happening. Does she understand the concept of speculation?
It seems pretty clear that the secretary was the presumptuous one not because she assumed that the band existed, but that she signed them up for an activity without 1) verifying that said band had actually been formed, and 2) that they would be interested in participating in the event. Because she failed to do either, it seems that she was the one making assumptions about other peoples’ willingness to perform.
