doctor’s office constantly leaves me on hold, coworker’s bare-bones emails, and more

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. My doctor’s office constantly leaves me on hold — how do I deal with this at work?

Do you have any advice on how to handle important personal phone calls with LONG hold times when you’re working in a client-facing position?

My doctor’s office has developed a fun new habit of either leaving me on hold for extremely long times if I call the central scheduling line or never picking up (and then never returning my voicemails) if I try to call the specific reception desk of my specific office, even when I’m returning a call from that same reception desk.

I am the sole receptionist in a busy office, and my doctor’s office is only open during my own work hours. There’s no one else at home who can make these calls on my behalf. It’s really not feasible for me to be sitting on hold for ages while clients are trying to talk to me – there’ve been times I’ve had to lose my place in line to hang up and focus on a client, and times when I’ve been hung up on because a scheduler finally picked up my call and I couldn’t get my personal phone to my ear fast enough – but obviously my doctor’s office doesn’t care. It feels ridiculous stepping into a private office to sit around listening to hold music while there’s work to be done (not least because I might be asked to use some of my limited sick or vacation time to make up for the lost work time), but if this is going to keep happening, I’m truly at a loss for what else to do.

Any advice for managing the actual calls AND the stress of trying to deal with Important Health Stuff while at work would be deeply, deeply appreciated. (It’s not feasible for me to switch healthcare providers for a variety of reasons right now.)

Oh, this sucks! Ultimately your only option might be to save the calls for lunch time, but that’s not always easy to do.

If you did use the conference room plan, is there any work you could take in with you so you wouldn’t be expected to use PTO for that time? And is there someone who could cover for you at reception while you did? If the calls are daily that’s probably not realistic, but if they’re only occasional, you might be able to simply explain the situation and ask for help. Otherwise, I think you’re probably stuck with confining them to lunch.

2. My rude coworker sends me the most bare-bones emails possible

I have a coworker who is known within the organization to be prickly. I have worked here for seven years and dealt with her for the first six of these years with little issue (besides hearing about how difficult she is from others).

As part of my job I have to ask her to create invoices on occasion. I make these requests via email, always with a friendly “Hi Julie” and provide the information such as client details, budget line, cost, and details of what I need to be created. I thank her and invite her to come back to me if she has any questions.

About a year ago I had to ask her to regenerate an invoice she provided me (due to my manager changing the way she wanted it worded). I explained why I needed it altered and apologized that we were causing her to re-do something we had asked for. (My manager is a GM and it’s very rare for him to cause inconvenience, but on this occasion we did.) Ever since, I’ve noticed Julie has dropped any “niceties” and begun interacting with me with a curt tone.

The last three times I’ve asked for an invoice, I’ve had to do a follow-up “just checking you got my request” style email after no reply a week later. Then I received blank emails with no salutations or acknowledgement — she is simply replying to my emails with what I’ve requested (invoice) attached. I ignored it the first two times, but this last occasion I am finding it rude and inappropriate.

Compounding the lack of communication is that this last time is I needed to go back to her because a small detail was missed. I politely replied with, “Hi Julie, thanks for sending me the invoice, unfortunately this one has tax included. I believe this will need to be amended before I send it out. I’ve attached the details again in case there’s something I’ve got wrong — let me know :)” Again, no reply or answer or acknowledgement, just a reply email with the amended invoice attached.

Saying hi/thanks and acknowledging me doesn’t feel too much to ask for. A simple “Hi Jane, invoice attached, regards” would suffice, even if she does choose to never respond to my questions. I want to raise this with her and give her the chance to keep her behavior in check so I drafted this: “Hi Julie, thank you for the amended invoice. Should I be reading into the fact that all the emails I receive from you don’t greet me and lack any content or answers to any questions I ask? Regards, Jane”

I thought by writing it this way I am giving her the chance to either (1) reassure me she has no issue (whether she does or doesn’t, it will prompt her to do better; sometimes with a bully you knock the wind out of their sails by talking about their passive-aggressive behavior up-front) or (2) ignore it because she does want to send a message. If she ignores it, I would like to elevate it to my manager. I don’t care if it is through gritted teeth, I’d like some courtesy of basic salutation (hi and regards) going forward. Are my expectations too high? How would you approach this?

Your expectations aren’t unreasonable, but you should let it go. Some people do send very bare-bones emails with no text and only an attachment. It’s not a very polished way to communicate, but it’s a thing people do and it’s not egregious enough in a coworker that you’d have grounds to address it. In Julie’s case, it’s notable that she didn’t start doing this until after you committed the terrible offense of asking for a minor modification that it’s her job to make, so clearly she’s expressing some Feelings by emailing the way she does … but it’s not a big enough thing to act on.

That said, if she’s not responding to requests at all until you follow up, that part is something you could bring to your manager — although even that depends on how much of a problem it poses to your work.

Related:
do I care too much about email style?

3. My former coworker wants to stay in touch, but I don’t

I was recently laid off from a job after a year, rather unexpectedly. I recognize things I could have done differently, but the job description changed after I was hired and my skills were no longer a good fit. I left a good job to take this one, and I feel a lot of anger towards the company that I am working through (in therapy).

My question is about a former coworker who wants to stay in touch. We didn’t work together closely while I was there, and when we did, we didn’t particularly get along (she snapped at me more than once). Mostly I kept a cool but friendly distance from her. During my last week, she cornered me at lunch and asked a bunch of intrusive questions about why I was being fired, if I was going to move, if I planned on having kids because that would make the job search harder, etc. It was extremely unpleasant and I cried in front of her, which I really didn’t want to do. I tried to be nice and just thank her for her well wishes, assuming it was a misguided attempt at kindness.

Since I left, she has sent multiple texts checking in and asking me how job hunting is going, and sending “helpful” advice like to look at Indeed for job listings. I think she is still just trying to be kind, but I don’t want to talk to her! Even if our relationship hadn’t been difficult, I don’t want to talk to anyone from my old company, given how angry I still am. To make it worse, I don’t have any new job prospects on the horizon and I am not doing great! So far I have just ignored the messages, but that doesn’t feel like a very good response. Do you have any suggestions on what I should do and/or say?

The generous interpretation is that she feels bad for making you cry (she should! those questions were rude and unkind) and she’s trying to smooth it over / be helpful now. The less generous interpretation is that she’s a busybody, which is why she cornered you with those questions and why she’s trying to continue to stay in touch now.

Either way, you should feel free to keep ignoring her! She’ll get the message or give up eventually. Truly, it’s fine to do this with people you were never close with and have no interest in staying in touch with. If ignoring feels too rude, then answer only sporadically (maybe every third email), let some days pass before you respond, and keep your answers bland and non-informative. But seriously, it’s fine to just ignore them.

Unrelated: you’re using fired and laid off interchangeably and they have two different meanings. Fired is if you were let go because of something about your performance or conduct. Laid off is if you were let go because your employer eliminated your position. If you were laid off, make sure you’re not telling people you were fired!

4. Clarifying time zones when scheduling interviews

I’ve noticed that many recruiters frequently use “standard time” when scheduling interviews via email, even during periods when daylight saving time is in effect. For example, when setting up a phone interview in California during daylight saving time, they’ll often confirm the time as “1:30 pm PST” instead of “1:30 pm PDT.” It seems that some people either automatically default to “S” for “standard” or may not be aware of the distinction between standard time and daylight time.

Since I’m almost certain they mean 1:30 pm local time in California, I usually choose not to correct this detail to avoid coming off as overly particular. Alternatively, I might subtly confirm by responding with something like, “Great, I look forward to our interview at 1:30 pm PDT!”

Do you think it’s better to just assume they mean daylight time when/where daylight time is in effect, subtly clarify the time zone, or do something else?

It is absolutely the case that many people default to S when abbreviating time zones (to say nothing of how many of us can’t remember whether we’re currently in daylight savings or not). So yes, assume they are citing their geographical zone and ignore the Standard/Daylight piece of it. People are definitely not indicating that they use their own special time zone that’s an hour off from how everyone else in their region tells time during this part of the year. (Two exceptions: Hawaii and Arizona, with the exception of the Navajo Nation, don’t use daylight saving time at all.)

I’m a fan of leaving off the middle letter altogether and just writing “1:30 PT” (or whatever).

5. Accepted job offer but there’s no start date

I accepted a six-month temporary job with a staffing agency. However, they are still waiting for their client to give a start date. I have contacted the staffing agency, but they have not received a response yet. Should I continue looking? This would have been the perfect opportunity because it is work from home.

Yes, continue looking until there’s a start date. Right now it sounds like there’s too much chance that the job won’t come to fruition, and the staffing agency doesn’t sound like they’re offering any information to prove otherwise (like “we expect you to start the last week of the month, but the VP is on vacation until Monday so we can’t confirm for sure until then” — although even in that situation, I’d probably advise you to keep looking until it’s fully settled). I’m sorry!