Well, be careful, here. If you give the boss a completely documented daily log of “Barb”'s comings and goings, that could easily be seen as being an excessive busybody. Frankly, that’s probably how I’d see it if I were the boss.
A more general ‘seems to be out a ton’ gets the message across without seeming like you’ve just appointed yourself junior inspector-general.
As well, in addition to saying that your boss is unfit for her job, by complaining you are implying that your bosses boss can’t do their job either.
God no! The idea with this approach is not to make it look like you are monitoring her, or that you think anything is wrong with her ethics - its simply to point out that her lack of availability is causing the team issues, and ask for that to be addressed. If she were gone half a day and it were causing issues, then that would be addressed (and for low skill teams, there is usually additional supervision just for this). And, if it isn’t causing the team issues - other then people getting pissy about it, it isn’t a problem.
You should start leaving as soon as the supervisor does too, and taking off the same days
How sure are you that your supervisor’s manager is covering up her absences? If you’re sure about it, I’d go the hotline route, because the person you should talk to is in on it.
I’ll sympathize with you; I had a job for a while where one co-worker was pregnant and taking multiple days off every week, and the supervisor was on the phone on personal phonecalls constantly and unavailable for answering questions that we needed answers for to move on with our work. It really is demoralizing; why do I have to show up five days a week and work for eight hours when they don’t?
ETA: I should say, for the same (or more) pay. If you’ve arranged for a part-time gig, that’s a whole different story.
It’s really not your business what she’s managed to work out in terms of hours. For all you know, she has a severe medical problem or is taking advantage of perfectly-legal federally-mandated FMLA benefits to care for a parent or child or other relative. My mother was in and out of work for a couple of *years *due to developing problems with her eyesight. Sometimes she wouldn’t know until she woke up in the morning whether or not she’d be able to work that day (all depended on when she had a retinal bleed). And I hope it goes without saying that she had no obligation to reveal her medical problems to her coworkers (much less her direct reports). As long as HR knows what your supervisor is doing and keeps her on the staff, then there is no problem (or at least, not one that concerns you). Just do your damn job and keep your nose out of other people’s business.
At my last job, my coworker had a very oddball schedule. Three 12-hour days a week, when the rest of us were working 5 8-hour days. I eventually (after getting to know her on a personal level) learned that she was taking care of a parent with dementia. Full-time employment and full-time caretaker. She’s still one of the bravest, *busiest *people I’ve ever met. If she could have afforded the financial hit, I would have been first in line to recommend she spend fewer hours at work.
You could benefit from a dose of humility and a big bottle of MYOB.
Um, because different people aren’t the same? I don’t know how else to answer this question. It’s like complaining that sick people use health insurance more than healthy ones. No duh, because they *need *to. The situation with the supervisor taking personal calls while on the clock is not related to someone who takes time off work for medical issues.
I am going to disagree with mostly everyone else and say that you should report it if you have a method of doing it anonymously. Clearly it is a problem for you and if the person has valid reasons, that will come out when someone deals with the complaint. You may never know what happens and maybe the behavior won’t change because there is a cause for it but at least you will feel better.
Seconded. And I’m sorry but I am spoliering the following because it may be out of line for MPSIMS and if it is, Mods, I apologize. I just had someone give me some grief today and my nose is a bit out of joint because of it.
[spoiler]My husband and I have friends who see us out and about during the day - oh - they aren’t working! What a cushy job! You only have to work a few hours a day! And when I go to the office? Yeah - I leave after a few hours - because I can’t get muich done there. I’m there to cover shipping stuff for someone else - when that’s done, I go home and do what I REALLY do.
So not working? Wanna bet? My downtime happens to be around lunchtime due to what I do and who I do it for. You don’t see me working the 60 hours I do a week - then again you aren’t around when I get up at 3 AM for a conference call with London - you are not around when I am up until 10 or 11 PM STILL WORKING because of time zone issues - and you CERTAINLY aren’t around when I have to work seventeen hours on a weekend because of deadlines.
So don’t talk to me about when I work and what I do - you don’t have a clue. [/spoiler]
I agree. I would honestly probably try find a way to fire someone under me who reported such a thing. It is a sign of numerous logical fallacies and bad work traits that are not welcome. If someone showed me a log that they were using to record the comings and goings of a coworker let alone a supervisor and that behavior did not include anything illegal or truly threatening to the company, I would be tempted to fire them on the spot but would most likely send them to work counseling about appropriate boundaries and focusing on their own work. Even if they turned out to be right about some of it, that would just be through blind luck and still wouldn’t exonerate the reporter at all for something like this.
I had to counsel a younger colleague of mine about just that sort of thing a couple of weeks ago. He and the rest of the people in their subcontracting company were displaying way too much of that type of thing both among themselves and others and they did not know what they were talking about nor did they have a reason to be concerned with it at all. It was just their natural caustic style in action. I sat him down and told him what happened to the last person that contaminated the work environment with the same attitude. The previous one was stripped of work duties so that he couldn’t do any more harm and put alone in an office for a few months until his contract expired and he could be removed. The person I talked to is much better now.
This thread boggles my mind. She’s talking about making a complaint so that her company can investigate. Maybe the supervisor leaves so she can save orphans from burning buildings everyday or maybe she’s a lazy sack of garbage who is letting other people pick up her slack. If no one investigates, the company will never know. It bothers the OP enough for them to post here, why shouldn’t they ask someone to look into it?
Because it isn’t her place…Dead Stop. People that stick their noses into things that don’t have any reason to be concerned with or the knowledge to understand them are not welcome in many contexts. You can call the police any time you think you hear about a victimless crime in your neighborhood but there is an unflattering name for that as well. It is the same thing within companies. All you are going to accomplish is piss people off in general and get yourself a top spot on the next firing list.
We can brainstorm why the supervisor may be behaving that way but we can’t know yet the people managing the situation either know and approve of it or simply don’t care. Some of the potential reasons that explain the behavior are another type of workplace violation on their own against the reporter. It is bad news especially when a company let alone a subordinate tries to pry into something that is none of their concern (personal health issues and similar types of problems are covered under federal confidentiality laws for example).
You aren’t going to make it too far in the working world if you decide that micro-managing the details of people’s lives, especially those above you, are more important than just doing your own job. You can always leave if you find the whole environment distasteful. We aren’t talking about theft, consumer safety or similar types of allegations. Those are different.
Could she be cyber-commuting?
Working from home?
[del]Picking up sailors for a dime a dance, in a low dockside dive?[/del] Exploring other options?
If she/he and her/his entire team are finding ths a real morale killer and are actually keeping track of a manager’s time and hours for the entire year to date then they are ALL paying way too much attention to things that are none of their darn business and would probably do far better to pay attention to their own jobs. This is all they have to worry about day after day? A supervisor’s schedule and possible accomodations made by THEIR management that you know nothing about? Get back to work and mind your own business.
Amen. It boggles my mind that people think this type of thing is acceptable. I learned it in first grade along with all my classmates. We were free to tattletale on anyone for any non-dangerous offense but the deal was that both the offender and the reporter got the exact same punishment if it was found to be true. We had a few kids that had to sit in chairs at the front of the room with their tongues sticking out for 5 minutes but the lessons seemed to be learned very quickly.
Some adults have never learned that unfortunately. However, the rule is the same in spirit for most workplaces. It sucks a lot worse to lose your job or get frozen out of any promotions just because you never internalized an elementary school level lesson.
wow. I really feel put in my place by some of you. In response to some of the questions that have been put forth. Yes, her absence affects our performance. Approvals to proceed are delayed causing late deliverables. We are accountable for late deliverables.
No, this is not kindergarten tattletelling. How is this so different from the employee who pads overtime? She is salaried - we are all salaried. This supervisor actually told me that I should take a week or more off after cataract surgery. When I said my doctor would not write an excuse for additional time, she told me she would take it off because her doctor would give her an excuse.
Perhaps unprofessional may have been a better term to use.
And yes the manager is in on it. It has been made very clear to everyone in the office that we are not to question her decisions and not to come to him with the question thus creating an “ask mommy, ask daddy situation” (his words)
Our hotline is anonymous but I probably won’t call. Just needed to vent.
This is a valid issue and, professionally, your only concern (your boss’s absenteeism is her manager’s concern). Follow my advise from above and go to your boss with the concerns regarding late deliverables and ask for suggestions to speed approvals when she is not available. Do not be accusatory regarding her absences. Act as if every time she is gone it has been approved by her manager. Have the discussion be entirely about the late deliverables.
Tattling? Part of the problem with today grown-ups is the “don’t tattle” crap. Mistakes are ignored, malfeasance is brushed over, and major malfunctions get attributed to fate. Those anonymous ethics hotlines are there for a damn good reason.
There is known ethics breach in this case. It could be perfectly innocent as well as approved and protected by law. It is nobody else’s business, especially a subordinate.
Hint: there is no ethical breach in having different work schedules for different employees especially if the supervisor in question is salaried. You get paid by the year, not by the hour and it can be as few or as many hours in total as their manager deems appropriate. It is nobody else’s business.
When she’s not available to sign off on an approval, can you approach her supervisor to sign off in her place?