Dear Boss,
My workload is mostly comprised of overflow tasks from other departments. I generally like this because it gives me a variety of things to do. I regularly deal with four managers. Three of them are good to work with. One, Alex, is … not.
While the others always do a capacity check-in with me (asking if I have the bandwidth to take new work on), Alex regularly assigns me things without asking at all. It is not unusual that I will go on lunch and come back to a bunch of new tasks waiting for me with no discussion prior to assignment.
The things Alex assigns me have exceptionally short deadlines, are often missing key pieces of information, and are often assigned to me and then she suddenly becomes unreachable. For example, she assigned a task midday and then didn’t respond to my questions to fill in any of the blanks for hours. It feels like she assigns me things and then runs away from the computer for the rest of the day.
She also will regularly start a task, decide she doesn’t have the bandwidth to complete it, and then toss the half-completed task at me with a “complete this for me, will you?” and little else. This means I have to stop everything else I am doing to try to figure out where she left off and how important it is because there is no documentation. Most of the time, I just end up redoing her work because the pieces she “completed” were rushed and done incorrectly.
Then, when I kill myself to meet her incredibly short deadlines, I have to chase her for approval. Recently I was assigned something she wanted in two days, which I did, and when I asked her to approve it, she said she wouldn’t have any time to review it for five days. To me, if the project can just sit there for five days without anybody looking at it, then it wasn’t the rush I was led to believe.
I like Alex as a person and I know she has a busy life outside work, so I try to give her grace and understanding. When this started happening, I explained politely why these issues make my job harder, and we talked about how to keep it from happening in the future. At the time, she seemed understanding and apologetic and I felt good about where we left things. But it feels like the conversation went in one ear and out the other, because again I just got three new things assigned to me without a heads-up, with missing information, and with incredibly short deadlines.
I understand things happen and sometimes information gets delayed, but this feels constant and I am trying to manage workflows from four people.
I previously flagged this situation with my direct manager but at the time said I was just mentioning the issue for transparency and that she didn’t need to take action because I was dealing with it myself. However, since it keeps happening, I am not sure what to do or how to articulate my issues in a productive way.
I don’t want to be a tattletale and rat anybody out, and I also don’t want to seem like I am just bitching to my boss about people having a different work ethic than me. I will fully admit, I am pretty type A and super-organized, which is part of the reason I have the job I have. But this legitimately sucks and my hair is falling out from stress! What should I do?
That’s not ratting anyone out. That’s the appropriate next step when you’ve tried to resolve a problem yourself and it didn’t work.
You’re also not passing judgment on Alex’s work ethic in doing that. This is about how Alex delegates work, not her work ethic, and delegating well is a skill that people need to learn like any other. However, if you’re thinking about it as a work-ethic issue, that’s likely to color the way you talk about it — so take that out of your thinking and just report on the facts. The facts are that Alex assigns you work without context, on exceptionally short deadlines, with key info often missing; is unreachable for questions; and the work frequently sits for days after you rushed because you were told it was urgent. Those facts are really concerning, totally aside from any question about Alex’s work ethic (in fact, totally aside from any speculation about what might be going on with Alex).
You really do have to bring your boss in on this at this point, since the situation is affecting your work, your satisfaction with your job, and probably your overall workflow and availability for other projects (not to mention your hair!). If you were managing someone experiencing this, wouldn’t you want to know? Any halfway decent boss would. Just like you wouldn’t hide it from your manager if, say, some key software you needed for your job had a major bug that was causing issues with your work, you need to let her know about this too. (And you wouldn’t be ratting out or tattling on the software either! You’d be reporting a work problem.)
The concept of “tattling” or “ratting someone out” doesn’t really belong at work at all. Or to the extent that it does, it would be things like “Mark is always three minutes late to work and sneaks in so you don’t see him” or “I overheard Miranda complaining about the new price for parking passes” — in other words, something petty that doesn’t really matter and where your only point in sharing it is to get someone in trouble. “Tattling” as a concept really doesn’t apply at all when something is causing genuine problems for your work.
People tend to worry about it when they need to talk to their boss about a problem with a co-worker because it feels personal and like you might be trying to get the person in trouble. But you’re not trying to get Alex in trouble. You’re just matter-of-factly looping in your boss on something that’s impeding your work and that you haven’t been able to fix on your own and asking for her assistance traversing it like you would with any other work problem. She’ll want to know.
Find even more career advice from Alison Green on her website, Ask a Manager. Got a question for her? Email askaboss@nymag.com (and read our submission terms here).