Actually it sounds like the squeaky wheel wanted fancy shoes and a special chair which he didn’t get.
I can’t really fault Foxy here.
The ultimate point of a workplace is to do work, not to solve everyone’s issues and mete out perfect justice. You don’t want to treat employees like cattle, absolutely, but you also don’t want to play counselor and spend far too much time working on interpersonal issues.
Sometimes the best path to productivity is to just avoid the possibility for conflict in the first place, regardless of how “fair” it might be.
Believe it or not, chairs can be dangerous!
I had another job, years before the one I mentioned upstream, where everybody, again, had their own offices (or shared with one or two people). We all had these high back armchairs, which weren’t exactly what you’d call impressive “executive” chairs, but they did swivel, rock, and roll. The dangerous part was that they only had four wheeled ‘feet’ at the base, so if you rocked back too far, and didn’t have one of the wheels pointing directly backwards, you could kip yourself right over.
My post was not at odds with this statement. My point is you have to bring up new efficient ideas to the supervisor. You can’t just start revamping processes yourself. If you accidentally overstep in violation of the office culture and people get pissed off at you, like what Scarlett did, the correct response is to apologize and put it back, then go through the proper channels. If you (general) disagree with this, then office work is not well-suited to you (general).
The OP mentioned “patients”, so what kind of job does the employee in question do? I thought hospital staff often wore athletic shoes of some sort, these days. But as for the chair, and remembering any and every nurses’ station I’ve seen, I agree it would probably be a problem due to space issues alone.
uuaschbaer, stop baiting people. Foxy40 has given some reasons for her decisions which you obviously don’t agree with, but that doesn’t make them wrong. Every workplace is different.
!f you want to start a rant against overbearing bosses, or if you have a problem with Foxy40, take it to the Pit.
I can relate to the OP. I manage a team of four, and one employee wants to work from home twice a week instead once (which is what everyone has been doing).
I’m not aware of written policies that limit the frequency of teleworking, so any objections I’d have to it would be based loosely on Tragedy of the Commons reasoning. If everyone in the team decided to work from home twice a week, how will this affect our work and team cohesiveness? It probably won’t make it great, but do I have any evidence that it would actually be bad? No. And yet I still not thrilled about letting this employee work from home so often. Is this visceral reaction a valid reason for saying no?
To be clear I don’t fault Foxy EXCEPT that she is upset merely that the employee asked. I don’t see it as a huge breach of workplace etiquette or a symptom of squeaky-wheelism to ask if you can use your own resources to be more comfortable. On the other hand, totally aside from the legitimate logisitical issues that require the request be turned down, Foxy40 does apparently feel that
a. some of her employees are prone to workplace drama about the tiniest, most ridiculous things
b. Nothing should be done that might set off the Drama Llamas.
c. anyone who wants to do something that might set the drama llamas off, has done something wrong, even if it is just asking about it. It should be obvious to any employee that anything the Drama Llamas wouldn’t like, is not permitted.
I don’t think it’s “merely that the employee asked,” it’s that two such requests for special exemptions point to a possible issue in the future where the guy just keeps asking for more and more exemptions, and she’s trying to decide whether or not the questions the guy has asked are indicators of this potential problem or not.
First it was the shoes. Then it was the chair. Next week it might be that the guy wants an hour-long lunch instead of 30 minutes. The week after he might want to leave a half hour early.
Problem employees do exist, and a wise manager takes note of flags so they can be prepared when the real problem rears its head.
I get the whole uniformity thing. Here at my workplace (125,000 employees spread out across the world; 40,000 here), we have standards for office size, etc. The things that we can change are:
a) Personalization. We can bring in plants, pictures, artwork, non-religious, non-nationalistic items. And now we’re not allowed to go crazy with sports paraphenalia after one Gator fan got a bit too obnoxious. As they say, it only takes one.
b) Ergonomic items - This includes your choice of mouse, keyboards, monitors, monitor risers, foot rests, back support, …and office chairs. What’s comfortable for Jim might not be comfortable for Sally. If you don’t like the standard chair that is issued, you can call up the Ergonomic team and they’ll set you up with a new chair. On the company dime. A new chair and ergonomic keyboard are a lot less expensive than a Worker’s Comp claim.
c) Temperature adjusters - fans, personal heaters, etc are allowed because people like different temperatures. And you shouldn’t ever try to get in the way of a woman and her fan during menopause.
BTW, we did get one round of complaints after a particular department all got new huge monitors. After they were delivered, EVERYONE wanted one, too, and came to me to ask me to order them one. I told them that there were two ways for me to approve their request: 1) They could call the Ergonomics team and request one based on need – failing vision, for example; 2) If they could convince me that a large part of their day involved working with an application such as what the “favored” department was using, which worked best if you could see the entire screen at once.
As soon as they realized that there was a justifiable reason for the monitor disparity, they shut up.
I say let him bring the chair. It’s not your job to make sure he provides free chairs for everyone. As long as it won’t impede his work ethic in anyway… it’s a nice gesture. Still an odd request.
Exactly.
Also this.
Not to mention that he is a new hire asking for these special exemptions. Maybe after he had been at the job for a year or six months and gotten a feel for the company culture, he would have an idea about how his requests would be taken. At this point, he just wants what he wants, in spite of knowing that there is a company code that he apparently doesn’t think applies to him.
Here’s how I see it:
- It’s the employee’s job to get their work done.
- It’s the manager’s job to remove all impediments to the employee’s job (e.g., take care of the red tape), to make the employee’s experience as pleasant as reasonably possible (i.e., boost morale), and to ensure that employees either do their job or leave (i.e., HR stuff).
In this case, if the chair is impeding the employee’s ability to do the job–part of which is to convey a certain image to the public–then sure, say no to the chair, but do so apologetically. Make it clear that the request was a reasonable one being denied for reasonable reasons.
If the problem is catty co-workers, then those co-workers are an impediment to the worker. I spend plenty of my time here in third grade teaching people not to be trifling, and I’m happy to give a lesson on the subject to your small-headed employees who have nothing better to do than to get upset over the cushion someone puts their bottom on; I’ve got exactly the conversation lined up for that, having had it with plenty of children.
A manager who has a high tolerance for people making themselves comfortable, and a very low tolerance for pettiness and backbiting and nonsense, is a good manager IMO. Yes, being petty is part of human nature, but so is seeking comfort. I’d much rather privilege the person seeking personal comfort over the person seeking nasty office politics.
I think we’re reading this situation differently. While the shoes were a part of corporate policy I see no indication that uniformity in chairs was part of a policy. I don’t think he thought of this as an “exemption” since that implies, first, that there is a rule. I certainly wouldn’t think I was asking to be “exempted” from a “workplace rule” if I asked to bring in my own chair. How about if I bring in my own pens, or a pink highlighter because I just plain like it better better than office-supplied yellow highlighters? Am I trying to get myself “exempt” from some obvious workplace regulation, if there is no rule about highlighter colors?
As a manager looking for red flags I would care more about how the employee took the refusal (graciously? sulkily? angrily? cheerfully?) than the fact that something was requested, twice in 4 months.
It’s also possible that the only reason there isn’t currently a rule is because it’s not something that anyone ever thought about before, but there may be good reasons for denying the request regardless (like uniformity of the office, same as the reason for the dress code).
I agree that because there wasn’t a rule before, it’s not really as bad as wanting an exemption for a rule that is already in place, but asking for two customized things suggests that he likes customized things, and that he wanted an exemption to a rule for one of the customized things suggests he could be an employee who values having things customized for him over being a productive worker. (I value being paid without having to work too, but I know damn well my bosses don’t, and while I’m at work I value what my bosses value.)
I’m not saying anything like he should be mentally branded a troublemaker already and that Foxy should assume he’ll go further down that road. But it’s entirely possible to be open to the possibility while still operating professionally and not banging on him for things he might do.
I’m really not following this line of thought though. Everyone enjoys having things around them that they prefer, I think that’s a given. Like you said I prefer to have a masseuse on staff fulltime! That doesn’t mean I get it.
However, I don’t follow that requesting a change in work environment means you value comfort more than productivity. Most people are more productive when they are comfortable. Most people would like to have their work be a place they feel reasonably comfortable, because that makes getting work done easier.
In my earlier example, where I had to wear gloves because my fingers were going numb from the cold, was I valuing my comfort over productivity? Would I be valuing my comfort over productivity if I asked for (and was refused) a small space heater? My request is entirely aimed at making me MORE productive, not less.
It does if you want an exemption to a rule for no reason other than that you like your shoes.
Not all rules are perfect or well-thought-out, but when they’re not there’s usually very good reasons for needing to break the rule. “Without a space heater/gloves I’m too cold to work well” is a pretty darn good reason. If you can’t find a reason other than pure personal whim for wanting to break a rule, then it’s likely that the rule’s there for a reason.
It’s also possible to be too comfortable. For some people a measure of personal comfort helps them be more productive, and for others it’s implicit encouragement to slack. I dislike working from home when I have a concentration-intensive project to complete; my home office is very comfortable, but it also means I’m open to distractions. I work better at the office precisely because those distractions aren’t available.
That’s all a bit abstract without too much bearing on the specific situation. For all I know the two requests the guy made are entirely isolated from each other and he’ll never ask for anything else and be a model worker. But as it’s presented in the OP, I’m be left wondering what the next odd thing he’s going to ask for will be.
As an employer, I always ask myself this question…
“If I allow this for one employee, then how would I feel if I allowed it for all employees?”
If I don’t like the idea of x different kinds of chairs in my building and/or storing those x number of chairs somewhere else in my building, then I know what my answer would be to that first employee.
Ah, in that case, I agree. We do use earbuds at our desks but it seems odd when I see people walking around the halls listening to their mp3 players. You can’t stop listening long enough to go to the bathroom?
If your position is that the problem is the “drama llamas”, then I have to think you haven’t worked in a lot of offices over the years. It’s not isolated to a few people…it’s just the way people act in an environment they live in more than their own homes, particularly people in repetitive, production roles. Is that ideal? No. Is there going to be some way you can let Snowflake have his chair and not have people hate him? Probably not. And let’s be clear: my job isn’t to fix those people and get their psyches straighted out. My job is to keep things moving with some aspect of team unity, and if I can do that by denying someone a fancy chair, I’ll do it.
If you’re still having trouble getting how offices are, think about roommates. Every house with multiple roommates has at least one crazy person. And every person in that house thinks the crazy person is someone else.