It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. How do I tell my coworker not to bring his kids to work every week?
I teach at a university and am not on the tenure track. I am in an office with nine other instructors and we only have the illusion of privacy that four-foot-high cubicle walls can give. Recently, another instructor moved into one of the cubicles after having a private office last year. This week I was surprised to see him roll a stroller into the office and then spend the next hour and a half entertaining his two children, one a loud preschooler and the other a very curious and mobile baby. I was trying to get work done, but the loud discussions of snacks, baby burbles, and noise-making electronic toys make it impossible. I eventually gave up and spent some time entertaining the preschooler. As he left the office with his children, my coworker told the preschooler that they all would see me again next week.
I had thought this was a one-time emergency deal, but it sounds like he expects this to be a weekly thing that no one else in the office will have trouble with. The problem is that no one is in charge of the office—we’re in a different location than the department we work for, and academics are notorious for wanting everything to be democratic and to not have policies passed down from on high. I could go work somewhere else when he is in the office, but I don’t want to trade access to my work computer and books for peace and quiet. To make things even trickier, this colleague often works closely with our department chair while I do not. How do I, someone without kids and who appeared to be just fine with having loud children in the office, tell this colleague that this arrangement won’t work?
If it’s very clear that he’s planning to do this weekly (as opposed to just, say, talking nonsense to his child to get them out of there more quickly), speak up now! You could say, “I of course understand if you’re occasionally in a bind with child care, but I’m concerned about the idea of bringing your kids in every week. It was pretty loud and distracting this most recent time and made it tough to focus. I don’t that’s feasible to do weekly.” Or you can wait until it happens again and frame it as, ““I of course understand if you’re occasionally in a bind with child care, but the noise is pretty disruptive when you do. I’m sorry to ask this because I’m sure you wouldn’t be bringing them in if you had other obvious options, but it’s tough to work when they’re here. Is it something you’re planning on doing regularly?” (That’s softer than “don’t do it,” but it’s an option when “don’t do it” isn’t something you have standing to say on your own.)
That said, academia is its own odd bird, and things that would be perfectly reasonable approaches elsewhere often aren’t in academia. Any academics want to weigh in via the comments?
2. How often should I accept my boss’s offer to grab me coffee?
I am in my mid-20s and have been working in a professional environment for close to two years. I am about three months into my current job where I work as a business assistant at a law firm. I report directly to the chairman of the firm, who is very high up and well-respected. We work in a building that has a Starbucks in the lobby. My boss often goes down to grab himself coffee and asks if I would like one myself every once in a while. He offers to everyone in the area and I’ve never seen anyone accept his offer. These are not his direct reports like I am.
My question is: how often is it appropriate to accept a coffee? Sure, it’s less than $3 and not much trouble, especially if he is offering. I’ve accepted once before, but I’m unsure is there is any etiquette that could help me gauge this situation.
I don’t think there’s one definitive answer to this! My personal take is that I wouldn’t take him up on it every time (unless you’re going to start making him the same offer in return sometimes) but it’s fine to accept now and then … but I have no idea how to quantify what “now and then” means. Once a month? Once every third time he offers? Those both sound reasonable to me.
I don’t think you should feel awkward about occasionally saying yes, though. When someone repeatedly offers to do something kind for you, it can be gracious to sometimes take them up on it (if it’s something you’d genuinely like to accept). It can also build more a connection between the favor-offerer and the favor-accepter in a small but not insignificant way.
3. Employee is monopolizing the conference room to get quiet work space
My office is open, but it’s not a new, innovative concept. It’s an old building and this has happened out of necessity. We’re the support team for several businesses downstairs, so it’s never going to happen that we move into a new, more workable space. We all work pretty silently, and keep distractions to a minimum. We also have a large, open event space where we’re all accustomed to taking phone calls and having meetings.
Recently, we’ve added a few employees and the volume level in the office has increased. Most of us have just deployed headphones, until the newbies catch on. (One is our new boss, so it’s not as easy as telling them all to keep it down.) The problem is with one employee, who has taken it upon herself to consistently go work in the event space. She also happens to be the only employee with a laptop she can work off of. But now, that room is never available for anyone else. Unless we ask her to leave, which she always is willing to do — it’s just awkward. I don’t know how to communicate to her that what she’s doing is inconsiderate. It also seems like she should be able to work in there if she wants to, and it seems petty of me considering the majority of the time that space is vacant. Am I being unreasonable?
If she’s always willing to leave when the space is needed for something else, it doesn’t sound like this is really a problem. Open offices can be incredibly difficult for people to work in, and if there’s a mostly unused conference room sitting vacant, there’s no logical reason why she shouldn’t use it, as long as she’s willing to move when needed, which she is. Working in there could be making a major difference in her concentration or her productivity, as well as to her morale.
I know it might seem unfair since other people without laptops can’t do it — but then the solution is for them to ask for laptops so multiple people could use the conference room as a quiet room at the same time, not to stop her from doing it just because others can’t.
If the issue is that you feel awkward or rude asking her to vacate the room, I’d say the solution is for you realize it’s perfectly okay to do that (and she seems to think so too, based on her cheerfully leaving when asked to).
4. When I arrived for my interview, the interviewer told me the job had been changed significantly
I recently applied for a job at a large, well-respected company in an industry that I have a lot of experience with. In the third week after the job posting, the hiring manager contacted me for an interview and told me to expect that the interview would last at least an hour. All seemed fairly normal.
Three days later, I arrived for my interview, and was told point-blank that the job description had drastically changed (“due to some changes in the department”); 50% of the job would now be something that was not in the job description at all, and the person I would be reporting to would be different. While I was still trying to process this (having just sat down), she said, “If at any time you feel you are no longer interested, please let us know so that we don’t waste any time.” She then spent the next 10 minutes telling hair-raising stories about how difficult, exasperating, and stress-inducing the newly added job duties would be (it almost sounded like she was venting about something that was currently her job that would be given to the new hire) and I couldn’t get a word in edgewise.
The fact that the job description had been changed on the fly was enough to deep-six my interest in working with this company (quite shocking considering their reputation and stature in the community), although the new job duties sounded pretty miserable too and they certainly didn’t sell me on working in the position. I did try to be polite but eventually had to interrupt to give a very cursory “Thanks for calling me in and here is a little bit about me and my work experience…” but then I quickly wound it up with “…and I’m sorry, but I don’t feel I’m the right person for this position as you describe it.” I added that I wished them luck in filling the position and that it might be a difficult search to find someone willing to take on such apparently demanding duties. (They said, “Don’t worry, we have a large applicant pool to go through.” I wonder if they had kept the truth from all their other applicants as well?)
I shook hands with everyone and even politely commended them on their honesty, but I also left with sour feelings too: they never once apologized for the bait-and-switch, and I had spent considerable time preparing for the interview, driving in to the interview site, arranging time off my current job, etc. It had been three weeks since the job was posted and three days since they called me in for an interview; could they not in the meantime have sent a heads-up email about how the job description had actually substantially changed and to ask if I was still interested? Am I off base for expecting that kind of consideration from a prospective employer, or is this just the way things are in the work world these days?
Yes, they should have told you beforehand so you could have decided if you were still interested or not. But while it’s reasonable to be annoyed, sometimes this stuff happens. Who knows, maybe they just nailed down the changes the night before. It’s better than if they’d interviewed you and then changed the job a week later — or worse, after hiring you.
In any case, yes, it’s annoying. But it’s also not cause for extrapolating any larger messages about the work world these days. It’s just one annoying situation that wasn’t perfectly handled.
5. Cover letters that say working there has always been a dream
Does it sound disingenuous to say that working somewhere has always been a dream? For instance, I’m a journalist and have a few publications where I have always wanted to work and/or be published (some big, like The New Yorker, but others small). In a cover letter, I would, of course, also elaborate on why I love their work and why I think it’s a particularly good fit for me — but I do that in every job application, regardless of how much I want the job. I know the New Yorker is everyone’s dream, but if I were to apply to some of the smaller publications that probably are not aspirational for every writer, does it sound childish to explain how important they are to me?
If it’s something like the New Yorker, don’t say it at all. They already know, because it’s true for so many people, and it’ll come across as slightly naive to say it.
If it’s a smaller place where it’s a much less common dream, it’s fine to spend a line or two on why you’d be so delighted to work for them — but just a line or two. They do want to know that you’re interested in working for them specifically, but that doesn’t require a lot of space to explain. They’re much more interested in hearing about why you’d excel at the role, and that’s where the bulk of your letter should focus.
telling my coworker not to bring his kids in every week, accepting coffee from my boss, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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