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A Subplot Straight Out of ‘Seinfeld’
Dear Work Friend,
My boss often neglects to respond to emails, even — or especially — when they are important or time-sensitive. It’s one of many ways in which she is perpetually behind. Recently, after a co-worker gently brought up an email that had been awaiting a response for weeks, we all started to finally receive backlogged email responses from her — at exactly 3:30 on Thursdays.
Our boss claims that there is a mysterious glitch causing some, but not all, of her emails to not send for days or weeks, and then to go out all at once at 3:30 on Thursdays. She makes awkward comments about her “3:30 emails”: In a recent one-on-one meeting, she sent me a document via email and then joked, “It might come through now, or it might come through several days from now at exactly 3:30. I don’t know why that keeps happening!”
The thing is, I’m almost certain that she is lying. I suspect she is catching up on old emails and then scheduling them to go out at that time to make it look like there is a glitch that is causing this to happen. What can my colleagues and I do about this — and about the larger pattern of her disorganization and strange, childish cover-ups?
— Anonymous
Your boss’s behavior is deeply unprofessional and extremely aggravating. However, and I hope you can hold space amid your frustration to appreciate this: It is also very funny. I wouldn’t say this entirely makes up for your inconvenience, but I’d like to think it offsets it a small amount. There are immature and unprepared supervisors at every workplace; only rarely do they provide material that will kill at parties for years to come.
In fact, your boss’s behavior is so funny and bizarre that I am tempted to suggest your best strategy is to play along by pretending you don’t get any of the emails she sends outside the Thursday 3:30 window. How often, after all, do you get a chance to live inside what is effectively a George Costanza subplot on “Seinfeld”? Raise the stakes! If she sends you an email in the middle of a meeting, simply claim you haven’t gotten it, and tell her you’ll follow up with her about it on Thursday at 3:35. She’s not doing her job, so why should you do yours? Surely, she would have no choice but to fold and start replying more promptly, or at least come up with a better excuse.
Alas. From what you’re saying about your boss, I worry this might trigger a feedback loop that results in your company’s collapse. Unless you’re willing to risk not just your job but the entire workplace, it’s probably not a good idea to fight unprofessionalism with more unprofessionalism.
There are two viable paths here. The simpler option is to talk directly to your boss, focusing on the effects of the late-email problem rather than on the root cause, real or fake. Explain to her that you’re sympathetic to this strange IT problem, but the office can’t get any work done if her communication is so thoroughly delayed, and that whatever is preventing the emails from going out in a timely fashion needs to be fixed. This option allows her to keep the face-saving lie and avoids a potentially damaging confrontation. If the missed deadlines are mostly just an inconvenience and not particularly threatening to your livelihood, it’s what I’d do.
But if your boss’s antics are threatening your reputation and career, the second path involves escalating the issue to her supervisors. Surely they’d like to know about this “email glitch” affecting operations?
Mm-hmm (Click, Click), OK (Type, Type)
Dear Work Friend,
I have a fully remote position managing a team of developers. My boss, our director, is overall a great guy. He looks out for us within the larger organization and seeks to reward strong performance. However, in my weekly one-on-one meetings with him, I can tell that he’s not paying attention because I can see his laptop screen reflected in the lenses of his glasses.
I’ve kept this to myself for a couple years, because I don’t want him to know that I know. However, lately it’s gotten worse. He has many priorities beyond my team, but it’s discouraging that I can’t even get three minutes into a 30-minute meeting slot without him responding to messages from someone else.
Beyond limiting the conversation to the absolute essentials, what should I do?
— Anonymous
This question hit home for me, personally, as someone who has noticed the way the computer-screen light on my face changes during a Zoom call when I switch to my bright-white Gmail page, and has worried that it’s obvious I’m downgrading to half-focus while I attend to other tasks.
Which is to say that I’m a little bit sympathetic to your boss. It might feel insulting and invalidating to you that he’s not locked in on your updates, but I’d venture that the issue isn’t that you’re boring, or that he’s inattentive, but that the weekly meeting is pointless — or at least less important than his flood of email.
After all, he’s been using your one-on-one slot to catch up on email for at least two years, apparently without any ill effect beyond your morale. It sounds from your letter like he’s an otherwise excellent supervisor and his multitasking habits aren’t really affecting his work on a practical level. Counterintuitively, I would read his distraction as flattering: He trusts you and your work enough to feel as though his undivided attention during a weekly meeting isn’t strictly necessary.
If there are issues on which you need his input every week, then I think you’ve got the right idea by paring back the meeting to the essentials. (You might take the extra step of sending him an agenda beforehand, since you know he’s prioritizing email.) But if you think his intuition that the meetings are unnecessary is correct — no matter how unprofessionally he’s communicating that intuition — the best thing you could do is suggest making the one-on-ones biweekly, or monthly, or turning the weekly check-in into an asynchronous update.
Alternatively, if changing the timing of the meetings is impossible, then you could try to dispense with important business in the first three minutes, and spend the remaining 27 in peaceful silence, catching up on email together.
Work Saturday — or Else
Dear Work Friend,
In April, all employees of our company were informed that we would be required to work on a Saturday in June, manning a booth at a large community festival. We would be paid, which is what made this action legal, but we weren’t told how much. We were encouraged to get to the location via ride share, at our own cost, and told that if we showed up late or left early, our pay would be docked. We were also told to expect hot weather and to have colored dust thrown on us — and of course, that we were to represent the company well.
The day before the event, leadership sent an email reminding us to attend and have fun, and that if we failed to show, we would be written up. There was a list of employee names and time slots at the booth, and the owner’s name did not appear. In all my years in my profession, never have I felt so depersonalized or objectified. Company morale is plummeting and backroom talk is overwhelming.
I’d like to make a comment but know that if I do, I will pay a price. The company is headed by the owner. We have no H.R. department and no vehicle for sharing concerns anonymously. Thus, I am left sitting with my feelings, totally dissatisfied with the company, the leadership and my job.
Other than considering a search for a new position, do you have any suggestions on what to do?
— Anonymous
First, I wouldn’t be so confident that your employer is legally aboveboard. Depending on your state and your employment status, you may have some protections around travel reimbursement, advance notice and especially rules about docking pay. So before you do anything else, I’d call your state’s labor board or an employment lawyer.
But assuming everything your employer is demanding is legal, I’d encourage you to consider that there are channels for your frustration beyond “speak my mind and pay a price” and “keep quiet and sit with my feelings.” You may not have an H.R. department, but you have something much more powerful: a work force with simmering anger. If you can organize your co-workers and present your grievances as a collective, you’ve effectively created your own institutional vehicle for sharing your concerns.
This doesn’t need to take the form of an official union-organizing campaign. (Though based on what you’re saying, it sounds like your workplace might need one.) It may just mean a collectively signed letter, or a demand for a meeting to address the worsening morale. Either way, your boss will have to listen, and you’ll have something to do with your anger besides stew in it.
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