My coworker is in the process of flaming out

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

If I had written this last week, I would have put it in the Pit. Now I’m just bemused and wondering what’s up with him.

I have a coworker, let’s call him F. for Flameboy. F. and I are in the same department, and we’re friends of a casual sort, but I’d never worked with him. I’ve used code he’s written, and it’s perfectly competent, and he’s managed multiple projects, and I get the sense he used to work very hard.

Lately, something seems to have happened to him, though. About a month ago, F. was put in charge of writing a report, and I was to write some subsidiary material for him. He dithered about, either saying he didn’t know what to do or simply not being available until right before the deadline, at which point I ended up telling him exactly what to do while writing more than the material I’d originally been slated to do. He didn’t do what I asked. I kept asking him to do less and less (going from “Write this section” to “Flesh out these notes I’ve taken on this section” to “Make this table to put in this section”) until I just gave up and wrote the entire rest of it myself this past weekend, when I had lots of other things I would have preferred to do.

This week, the second in command to our boss, M., needed some of the material from this report for a task he was doing for Boss under severe time pressure, and asked F. to take the report and cut it down to a smaller size. M. also asked F. to put together some information from our database. I estimate that it would take me (and I am not particularly fast) 3 hours to do this if I stopped to check the Dope and wrote some posts along the way. It took a day and a half for F. to do this.

Okay, so, screwing me over (I wish, given that he was not going to do a freaking thing on the report, that he had at least told me in advance instead of leaving me to figure it out) was bad enough for him, as there are a couple of people in leadership positions who have probably read between the lines (e.g., they are probably wondering why I went to talk to them about material for the report instead of F.). But screwing over M. was a really dumb move. M. is a super nice guy, and he hates to say anything bad about anybody, but a) I’m not going to complain to our boss, since that looks like I’m whining “Oh, why did F. get to be in charge of the report and not me?” but M. has no such problems, and b) the fact that M. never says anything bad about anyone means that if he says anything even slightly negative about F., which I think he will (M. sounded pretty frustrated with him at the last meeting we had), it will sound really bad.

Have you seen people just undermining themselves like this after years of competency? I’ve never seen anything quite like this before. F. doesn’t have any big stress in his life or anything. Well, he recently turned 40; maybe that has something to do with it?

2

It sounds like he’s burnt out and hates his job. It’s due to boredom, or midlife crisis type thinking (this is the dream job I worked hard to get?) but doesn’t hate it enough to quit.

3

This is exactly what’s happening to me right now. I might lose this job because of it.

4

I had a coworker commit suicide by HR a few months ago.

She wouldn’t come in and would not call. After a few times of “Oh…but I sent you an email! Something must be wrong with my email…”, I suggested that perhaps she use the telephone and not risk email. (seriously. Even if it WERE true that her email was jacked up, that seems to be an easy fix. :confused: )

She did this a few more times and then was supposed to meet with HR.

On the day of her meeting, she didn’t come in.

I miss her, but at least I got her good scissors after she was terminated. My old scissors were pretty awful.

5

How certain of this are you? How well do you know F. and his personal life?

He may be under some extreme personal issue you have no clue about.

6

I was going to say the same. I’m sure he doesn’t openly discuss his personal life at work. Perhaps his wife is dying, or he’s got huge debt and is about to be foreclosed on, or his child is a heroin addict and is stealing from him to supply his habit? You never know what’s going on in a person’s life.

7

EvilTOJ, I think you’re right. Though I’m not sure how much he’d enjoy another job either, unless he changes careers entirely. Perhaps that’s what he needs to do.

bengangmo, what would help your situation? Is there anything I can do for my friend? (Now I’m just getting kind of concerned for him.) What are your thoughts on changing careers?

F. is the kind of guy who is pretty open about his life, actually… and you know, now that you bring up debt, although he hasn’t mentioned family or relationship problems lately (which is what I usually think of as the big stressors), he has mentioned that he is concerned about his mortgage payments. Which… given that, I’d think he’d be doing whatever he could to make sure he kept his job in this economy, but I guess I could see how it would instead act as a stressor driving down his performance even more. (I think the fundamental problem is, as EvilTOJ mentioned, he’s burned out/midlife-crisising, but I suspect this isn’t helping either.) Ouch. What a mess.

8

Well, you didn’t ask me but I know in my case, I could offer a few times to take things off her plate or lend an ear, but other than that, I kind of had to let it go and protect my own work interests. I shared with her what my perception was as an outside party, just in case she was unaware.

Despit my flip comment about the scissors, I do miss this person. She has a new job now, so it did seem to all work out in the end, but it was pretty awful watching her crash and burn, chiefly because she was so talented in other ways and because I truly like her.

9

So why aren’t you going to the boss and saying ‘I’m a bit worried about F, he seemed really stressed when making the report we worked on together. I know you’re busy and might not catch it, so just giving you a heads up.’ I mean, if you’re not usually a busybody around the office no one is going to give you flack for it, and if it is something your boss is aware of, he’ll just thank you for the heads up and you won’t hear about it again.

No, it isn’t your job to police your coworkers, but maybe he’s too afraid to approach the boss directly saying he has a personal issue or something he’s working out, and if the boss comes to him first he might open up.

10

Cancer.

11

Hmmm, I think that I might be starting to flame out a bit myself. Making a lot of really stupid mistakes, that aren’t because I don’t know how, but because I rushed through and did it quickly and never stopped to review it.

Happened again today.

I do care enough that I have told myself to pull my head out of my ass, but that’s about as far as I’ve taken it. Its hard to care enough sometimes.

12

I’ve been there too, burnt out and fed up, and consequently under-performing; partly my own stuff, and partly the downward death spiral we’ve been on for such a long time here at my company. Fortunately for me I didn’t have additional outside stress, and I was able to straighten myself up before it got too serious.

Having people notice that I was under-performing would have been a huge kick in the pants for me. My case is different from yours, in that the people around me don’t do or understand much of what I do, so it’s easier for me to blow smoke about how long things take and so on.

So I think I agree with **kushiel **that you should bring it up as a subject of concern with M. And even though you haven’t been close to F. before, you could offer to help him out on a temporary basis if it will help him get on his feet again.
Roddy

13

If Flameboy has a mortgage then perhaps this doesn’t apply, but I was going to ask if he might be going to grad school sometime soon. When I went to grad school, I was not exactly super motivated the last couple months at my job (from spring to early summer).

A cow-orker did me one better: he was incompetent to the point of deliberately getting fired, so that he could collect unemployment for 6 months before starting grad school. Imagine my surprise when I ran into him in the hallway on the first day!

14

welcome to the rat race. Population: everyone over 19.

*I do this too. I’m never letting it get to that point again. If I start screwing up in this fashion, it’s “find another job” time.

15

Heh. I talked to M. and F. (separately), which was interesting. M. sounded annoyed, as I had suspected, and he had also noticed the situation with me beforehand (which made me feel better about not seeming like a tattletale). I don’t think he’s going to say anything to the boss right now (although if we have another round of layoffs and F. hasn’t shaped up by then, I think he’s toast); instead, M. has talked to F. and gently suggested that it may be a subject of concern. (So thanks, lorene, kushiel, and Roderick – that seems to have been the right approach, although I can’t take any credit since M. was already on top of it.)

As for F… He said things overall are going well, in a way that makes me disinclined to think there’s some hidden trauma, and that he’s thinking about a lot of things right now, without giving details. The last time I said something like that it was because I was applying for jobs, so I am hopeful. I’d understand a lot better if he were unmotivated, like neuroman, because he had a better offer somewhere else. (Though in that case I shall be more upset at him for not giving me a heads up on our report that he was going to be unmotivated… he can’t win with me, can he? :slight_smile: )

Meanwhile, our boss (who was finishing up the project for which the report and task I alluded to in the OP were needed, and who a) has much less idea what’s been going on with the three of us, and b) is somewhat more brusque than M.) emailed all three of us, asking for an additional graph. I responded saying F. was in charge of that (which he had been, though he’d never turned one in to either M. or me). Boss asked F. what was up with that, who promptly produced a beautiful one in less time than it would have taken me to do it. So he’s capable of fixing himself, given sufficient outside motivation, I guess, or maybe M.'s talk had some effect.

16

Update, for anyone who cares:

Huh. So it turns out that F. decided to quit (and asked to be laid off so he could get severance). I don’t think he was consciously trying to get laid off when he screwed over M. and me (if so, I sure wish he had informed us that he wasn’t going to be doing any work, that would have been much quicker and more considerate of us too), but I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if he had been trying to get laid off subconsciously. I talked to him a little before he rode off into the sunset, and he didn’t seem to have much of a plan to get his life together or even to get another non-temporary job (which I don’t think he’ll find particularly easy in this economy anyway, but what do I know).

The common consensus in the rumor mill at work is that he’s in the throes of a full-blown mid-life crisis… he told another co-worker/friend that now that he no longer has a job, he wants to stop paying his mortgage, which I believe he’s underwater on. Well, I wish him the best, and he’s Not My Problem anymore so I’m not going to worry about it, but I do think he needs a friend to sit him down and tell him to get his act together, because it seems like he’s just digging himself deeper and deeper.

17

Damn.

I had been lurking on this thread before, wondering what went on with F.

Well, good luck to him, but I sure hope if I have a midlife crisis I don’t go jumping ship like that. With no job and his credit shot (if he chooses to stop paying his mortgage) he’s going to have a hard time finding work anywhere.

18

Yeah, I’m kind of worried about Flameboy (um, in response to the public service announcement, sorry about the initials, I won’t do that again). Fortunately, he has a temp job, but I don’t think it’s a long-term gig, and (perhaps more importantly) neither does he.

Apparently a lot of guys have a midlife crisis, but most of the ones I know don’t go quite so far – that is, I know several guys who have changed jobs/careers at around age 40, but I think in all the examples I know of, they had one lined up and ready to go before they jumped ship on the old one. And even then, if it had been five years ago, I would have been much more sanguine about his chances.

19

I had to reply to this post because it hit home. My kid was a heroin addict and did steal from us and her younger brother. It was very stressful and I was working full time and going to school full time. I was a member of a class team and the project was due at the end of the term. One teammate knew what was up and was very supportive, but there was one person that was extremely critical, going so far as to call me and lecture me about how I needed to pull my own weight. I was doing my share of the work but it didn’t have the detail it normally did (I was an A student before that term). I burst into tears and told her that my daughter was an addict and had stolen from us before being hospitalized and subsequently overdosing. Twice. She still made comments; not directly to me but to other people “I went through a divorce and you didn’t see me slacking off”, etc. What a bitch.

Sorry, had to get that off my chest. That term I got a D and failed the other class, which I’m currently retaking. My GPA went from a 3.78 to a 3.46, which really sucks. I was looking forward to graduating Magna Cum Laude, now that’s not a possibility. Looking back I don’t think I could have reacted any differently. Sometimes life smacks you in the face and it isn’t anybody else’s business what is going on, especially at school and work. Sometimes those are the only places people can escape to in order to get away from the crap that is going on at home.

That is all.

20

That’s fair enough. And I’m sorry for what you had to go through, purple haze – that sounds awful. And it’s something I need to remember in general, to make more allowances for not knowing the entirety of people’s situations.

(That being said, in my particular situation, I would have been happy to take over the project entirely, and even still give Flameboy credit for it, had he simply told me he couldn’t handle it, even without giving a reason. And regardless of whether he’s got a personal trauma – which, apart from being underwater on his mortgage, which is true for a quarter of the people I work with, I am pretty sure at this point isn’t the case – I can’t help but worry that his actions right now are not going to be good for him in the long run… but it’s his life.)