I dreamed last night that I was in a building that was on fire but I kept not leaving. I kept thinking, “I need to get out RIGHT NOW,” and then I’d get distracted by trying to find the cat, or trying to figure out if I should bring anything with me, or trying to put on pants. It went from “I know the house is on fire but I see no evidence of it yet” to “I feel the heat and hear the crackling and smell the smoke and the floor is feeling as if maybe half of it has been eaten away by flames,” and STILL I didn’t leave. I feel as if I could make a good allegory with that.
It’s been a week since a supervisor sent out a pretty bad email, and I am still thrown for a loop by it. I wish I were more the “roll my eyes and go on doing what I know is a good job” type, but I am NOT.
Anyway, my degree is in business management / HR, so I tried to think of this from the other side of things. It went like this:
1. Should supervisors speak to employees this way?
2. Should anything be done about it, if they do?
3. If something should be done about it, what should that something be?
The answer to the first question in this case is just no, they should not speak to employees this way: the email was scornful and unfair.
The answer to the second question is harder: it really depends on how serious, how frequent, what the rest of the supervisor’s behavior looks like, etc. Insufficient information to make a call on this one.
The answer to the third is what interested me most. I’d been thinking that if someone said something to me and I didn’t like it, the correct thing was to go to that person and talk to them about it. Which, duh, I would rather stand in a burning house trying to put on pants. But then I realized that is what you do in PERSONAL relationships. In WORK relationships, that is not always the answer.
Some work relationships are between co-workers of equal rank, but in many work relationships there is a considerable imbalance of power and authority. If a person of higher rank has a problem with a person of lower rank, they have the power and authority to ask the person of lower rank to change. When it’s the other way around, that when there’s a problem—especially if the lower-ranked person fears the consequences of criticizing someone who has input over their schedule, pay, work load, evaluations, reputation with upper management, entire work environment, etc.
This is why there is a different system in place for dealing with a supervisor’s bad behavior: the correct thing in many of those cases is for the employee to go to the SUPERVISOR’S supervisor. This accomplishes many good things:
1. It means there can first be confirmation that the behavior WAS out of line with company standards, removing the “Wait, IS this a thing?” element, and making sure the criticism of the supervisor’s behavior is fair. Like, let’s say an employee got all upset because the supervisor said nicely that they had to stop coming in half an hour late all the time.
2. It means that if the supervisor’s behavior does need to be criticized/corrected, the criticism/correction can be done by someone of higher rank than they are.
3. It means the entire thing is on record with the company, which should make retaliation more difficult.
As soon as I realized all of this, I stopped having trouble figuring out how to write the email. It went from “Wah, wah, I don’t like it when you talk to me like that / Wah, wah, that’s not FAIR, I didn’t do anything wrong!!” (letter from me to supervisor) to “I would like to bring something to your attention and let you decide if and how you would like to handle it” (letter from me to supervisor’s boss who is also my boss).
The next question was whether to actually send it. There is the matter of COULD a person complain, and then there is the matter of is THIS one of fights I want to fight. I’m not going to send a letter every single time anyone does anything I think was wrong—so is THIS one of the very, very few letters I want to write?
I went for yes. In this case, the email from the supervisor significantly sapped my loyalty to the company and my willingness to take extra shifts; it also made me feel falsely accused and inappropriately punished. This is presumably not the effect my boss’s boss would hope for. Possibly I am the only employee who had that reaction, while everyone else rolled their eyes and got on with their days, but possibly NOT. If other employees feel as I do, this is a serious issue and worth a letter.
Furthermore, I am only willing to be spoken to in this way by a supervisor a very limited number of times before I quit, so it does not feel like a waste of a letter: if I wrote one letter for each time I was willing to be spoken to this way, I would end up quitting before I ran out of my limited allotment of letters.
I am in a rare position: I don’t need the money from this job (I WANT it for the kids’ braces and college, but it’s not the groceries/rent income), and I can easily find another job, and we’d be fine during the time of acquiring that new job and waiting for the first paycheck from it. My personal risk is low: if the response from the supervisor’s supervisor is terrible, or there are other unpleasant consequences of my letter, I can think, “Whew! How nice to have it made so clear that quitting this terrible company is the right thing to do!” Many of my co-workers are not in that position AT ALL: if THEY complain, their personal risk is very high.
Without putting on a cape or whatever (although…is that an option?), this is a job for Swistle: I can afford the risk, and I can write a business letter. I sent it yesterday morning. Now we play the “flinching every time I hear the new-email sound” game. Oh no, I just thought of something: what if the supervisor’s boss CALLS me??
Nice analysis! Good choice! It seems like the communication has sucked for a while, so way to speak up!
Communication from your supervisor, that is, not from you.
This is totally cape-worthy. You did the right thing in the right way for the right reasons and stood up for the folks who can’t.
SUPER SWISTLE!
If they call, you can let it go to voice mail, or you could say that you prefer to conduct this discussion in writing, because it’s important to have a record given the seriousness of the issue. Follow that up with an email saying the same thing. They will hear, “I’m making a record in case you fire me for complaining” which is somewhat true, but it covers the “I hate talking on the phone” issue.
Yesssssssssss this is what I will do!! Thank you for this idea!
My pleasure! So much fun when one’s hatred of talking on the phone actually serves the higher purpose of wanting a written record.
Yes, i would say that is one of those dreams that Means Something! Good for you for figuring out the situation; and I applaud liz for her comment about how to handle if you get called.
“… the correct thing was to go to that person and talk to them about it. Which, duh, I would rather stand in a burning house trying to put on pants.” I love this. I feel the same way. :)
I hope you hear back soon, and NOT via a phone call. (But Liz has the right idea if you get a call.) Go, Swistle!
Only recently have I learned the benefits of being candid to a supervisor. Honest is one thing, but candid is something else. I am in the middle of a Work Adjustment Thing and am willing/able to speak my mind about it more than anyone else on my team. It’s refreshing and annoying to be in that position.
xox
You are a delight. I love your thought processes and the way you convey them to us! And I think you have handled all of this so well. It makes me wish I could read the horrible email and your letter and be astounded by how horrible it was and how great your response. Hoping for an excellent outcome. And YES, CAPE!
I am very impressed by your handling of this terrible situation.
me too! Go, you! And thanks for the analysis – I sometimes need scaffolding such as this to walk me through problem solving.
Standing and clapping.
Can’t wait to read the next installment, and Good For You for being Brave!
Just yesterday I was discussing an ethics issue with a friend (who had an idea stolen from her) and I was reminded of a mantra a boss taught me years ago, “Professional, not personal. Rational, not emotional.” So the well-worded email to the uber boss was the way to go.
I hope that it is resolved in a way the benefits everyone, but most of all that it benefits you.
– Dana (aka Whimsical Walney from the t-shirt giveaway days of years past)
I’m in a similarish dilema. I teach at the sane school my children attend. As a teacher, it’s a good place to work and I’m happy. As a parent, I’m very, very angry about the direction the school is heading. But the changes aren’t being made at the school level–they’re dictated by the company who runs it. We’ll stick it out for 1 more year but I’m already dreading the conversation with my boss. “I hate all these things and I know they’re not your fault but I’ve got to pull my kids and also you have to find a new teacher.”
I’ve been in a similar situation- terrible supervisor, fear of retribution/retaliation, co-workers with much more to lose than I had, etc. I sent the letter, so to speak, and wish for everybody’s sake that I’d done it earlier. Way to go!
I hate the email sound – it sets off my anxiety every time I hear it. When I get to work, the first thing I do when I’ve logged in to my email is to mute the tab it’s open in, and then I can just check it when I have a few private moments with no children around.
Yay Swistle! Looking forward to hearing about the response.
Yay! I agree that this is def. cape-worthy, and am glad both for the update, and for the fact that this update seems to be sitting well with you. Very interested to hear what happens, and I love Liz’s suggestion on how to keep it written.
I also say, yay!
I hope this results in a benefit for all!
I am very anxious to hear the boss’s boss’s response. Excellent job!
I’m particularly glad you honed in on the part about it being a low risk action for you while it might not be for someone else.
I worked for a long time in an industry that was low-paying but highly competitive and coveted. It was also lacking in an HR department. There were many incidents over the years where people were mistreated but did not feel like they could speak up without risk. I still regret not raising some of those issues before I left the company when I was at no risk.
Yay Swistle! Whatever the outcome you did the absolute right thing. Keep us posted!
Haha, that is a VERY CLEAR DREAM that your subconscious was giving you :-D
Excellent everything all around! LOVE Liz’s suggestion above for avoiding phonecalls – uh, i mean, keeping a written record. I will need to find ways to use that in the future to avoid my own dreaded phonecalls :)
I’m so glad you are standing up for yourself but also for those who, as you say, cannot afford the risk of complaining. Everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. Thank you for taking a stand!