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I Know I’m Bothering You, but —
Dear Work Friend,
I have a cubicle neighbor who never stops talking. She yells my name over the cubicle wall, or turns the corner and stands at my desk, and proceeds to talk at me for 40 or more minutes at a time. I wish I were exaggerating, but this is a weekly occurrence. There’s simply no way to stop her, or even to ignore her and continue working while she chatters on. Mine is the only other cubicle near hers, so I am her sole victim. Her direct co-workers and supervisors are in another state, and she uses our office as her home base.
Several times now I’ve told her directly, “I have to focus on work and I can’t do that when you’re talking to me.” But she’ll simply start her next “conversation” with, “I know you’re busy and I’m bothering you, but—” and chat for huge chunks of time. I requested noise canceling headphones and have tried ignoring her, but she simply taps me aggressively on the shoulder. I’ve begged my supervisor — who is not her supervisor and who has no power over her — to tell her to leave me alone, because it genuinely affects how much work I get done. I’ve begged to have my desk moved several times. All denied. I have no way to communicate with her supervisor. I’ve run out of ideas.
Please tell me there’s some magical solution that I haven’t thought of!
— Anonymous
It’s remarkable how often the advice I give in this column boils down to something like, “Have you tried speaking directly with the person in your office whose behavior is irritating you in some way?” People’s fear of coming across as rude in the workplace is extraordinarily powerful, and allows them to avoid taking the most obvious steps to fix problems — but it also keeps me in business, so I guess I can’t complain.
But what can I do when someone (you) has already tried this basic default advice, and directly expressed their frustration to the irritating co-worker in question — as well as tried many other things besides? For better or worse, I’m just going to stand firm: I think you need to speak even more directly with this person than you already have.
The fact that your co-worker is this deeply oblivious to your lack of interest in (let alone frustration with) her one-sided conversation suggests to me that she is not a person who picks up well on social cues. At the same time, I suspect you are generally a polite and gentle person. What a socially sensitive person like yourself sees as an almost too-loud-and-clear signal to go away may not even register on her radar.
Which means you may need to turn up the volume (so to speak) much higher than you would normally be comfortable with. For the vast majority of people, “I can’t work when you’re talking to me” is easily understood as an imperative. But a person like this seems to interpret it as a neutral statement of fact. In which case you need to be unmistakably clear.
Have you tried saying some version of, “Please stop talking to me now — I need to return to work?” That kind of directness might help her better understand what you want. If she won’t let you get a word in edgewise, well: Have you tried interrupting her to say it? Have you tried saying it over and over and over, until she stops? Doing this (or something similar) might feel impossibly rude to you — it would to me! — but given the vast difference between your competing understandings of what constitutes polite behavior, I’m not sure your co-worker will interpret it the same way.
Mundane/Stable vs. Satisfying/Toxic
Dear Work Friend,
I am a mid-40s nonprofit professional. At nine jobs since graduating college, I’ve experienced two basic kinds of workplaces. In one, I like my team and my supervisors, but the work is mundane, frustrating or unsatisfying. In the other, I am passionate about the work, but my team is terrible.
The latter describes my current role. I love my clients and the work I do has enormous value. But there is no communication, support, clarity, consistency or respect from my supervisors. I get my work done despite my supervisors, not because of them.
Now I have the opportunity to take a new role, one that fits the former description — a fantastic boss and colleague, small office, lots of open communication and collaboration, potential for growth. But it’s highly technical work that doesn’t require creativity, and that puts me in front of a screen, alone, a lot more. Which is worse? Which is better? Which would you choose, and why?
— Anonymous
As much as I would like to rise to the occasion of such a philosophical question with a learned disquisition on the pursuit of work that is consistent, healthy, creative and filled with meaning, the only truthful answer to your question is for me to shrug and say: It depends.
Indeed, I think you already know this, given that you’ve outlined the trade-offs quite clearly, and that you yourself have already switched several times over the course of your career between “mundane but stable” and “satisfying but toxic” jobs. If one was consistently the better option, wouldn’t you, at some point, have elected to stay in that lane?
In some sense I’m surprised you’re even contacting me, as I think you might have figured it out better than anyone. If it’s near-impossible to find both fulfillment and well-being at a single job — and based on the letters I get, I think it is, especially in the nonprofit sector — why not tack between the two, ensuring that over the course of a career, you average out to enviable overall levels of stress, boredom, passion and creativity?
Which is one reason I would suggest, in this instance, to take this new opportunity. You’ve done your time in the “valuable but corrosive” half of the equation recently; time to balance it out with a few years on the “mind-numbing but healthy” side. If you find yourself missing the fulfillment of your current job — and downplaying in your memory the lack of communication and support you received — you know it’s time to switch yet again.
Are These Things On?
Hi Work Friend,
I recently did the first round of a job interview in which I was on a Microsoft Teams call with five employees of the company, who all kept their cameras off during the entirety of the half-hour call. No explanation was given.
As someone who has never done an interview over Teams before, is this (everyone’s camera off) a common thing? I found it impersonal — not to mention weird and distracting to stare at my own face during the interview.
Should I provide feedback about this strange interview to someone I know who works at the company? She is high up and may not be aware that this is what the staff is doing. I don’t want this to be a sour grapes thing — I didn’t progress to round two — but I honestly would like to spare other potential interviewees a bizarre experience.
— Anonymous
I’m with you on this one. As a practice, camera-off interviews are not at all unheard-of, but they’re also not widely accepted as normal or appropriate. (Reddit and other places where job seekers congregate online are crowded with stories of alienating camera-off interviews.) Your interview, in particular — no heads-up before the meeting, no explanation during it, and not even an opportunity offered to turn your own camera off — sounds particularly egregious. In addition to the general sense that you’re not worth the undivided attention of the hiring panel, there’s something deeply discomfiting and dystopian about watching yourself flop-sweat before the Faceless Microsoft Teams Tribunal.
But even so, I don’t think you should say anything to your contact. You say you don’t want it to sound like sour grapes, but I’m not sure what else it could possibly sound like: You don’t owe this company anything, and “saving hypothetical future interviewees from 30 minutes of awkwardness” is not particularly convincing as a reason to lean on your relationship with a senior figure at the company. If she ever asks, don’t lie, but it’s hard to imagine an outcome worth the risk of burning some good will with this person. Instead, make it a policy to ask before interviews if they’re camera-on or camera-off — and familiarize yourself with the way to hide your own camera view in Teams.
The post The Case of the Truly Incorrigible Cubicle Yakker appeared first on New York Times.
