employee won’t do part of his job, interviewing when they know they want to hire someone else, and more

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

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

1. Employee won’t do part of his job

I work for a small gym franchise as a manager. Our model is 24-hour access for our members. The staff is not there 24 hours.

Because of complaints we are receiving, I have asked all personal trainers to return towels to the laundry area if they see them overflowing. It’s a 20-second task.

Consistently one particular trainer will not do this task. Towels will be overflowing on to the floor before the office staff arrives. He arrives before the office staff. This is causing serious conflict between the office staff and him. He is the only trainer pushing back. This is mandatory.

I have a meeting with him today. I just don’t know how much more I can take with him. There have been other issues before this. He is very passive, complains a lot, and has a sense of entitlement. For example, we pay a flat fee for trainers to perform a 30-minute class. He demanded we pay him per participant. He refused to take on the class after we said no. He said he wasn’t making enough money, so we offered for him to work in the office and clean the gym on Sundays. He has declined almost every offer. When said, “I thought you needed extra money and there are six shifts you can work this week,” his response was that he feels like he is getting used (?).

Is he a good trainer? If so, it probably doesn’t make sense to lose him over the towels. But it sounds like there’s more going on than just towels.

To answer what you’re asking: you can’t make him do something he doesn’t want to do. You can only decide how committed you are to enforcing the requirement, even if it means you might lose him or others. If you decide it’s an essential requirement of the job, to the point that you’re willing to lose people over it, then you need to explain that and let him decide if he wants to continue working there under those terms or not.

The same thing goes for things like what classes pay and offering extra shifts; you just need to explain what’s on offer and under what terms, and then he can decide if he wants to take you up on that or not. Your role isn’t to cajole him into seeing things that way you do; your role is just to be very clear about what you can and can’t offer, and what’s required to remain in the job. His role is to decide if he’s up for that or not. If he’s not — based on either word or deed — then the next step is to ask (either yourself or him, or both) whether it would make sense to part ways.

2. Employee asked me not to call an ambulance if they had a seizure

I’ve had two new hires over the past seven years tell me that they have epilepsy. Great, thanks for telling me, what should I look out for in terms of warning signs, anything particular that you might do at work that could trigger them that we need to change, etc.? Both employees, about a year apart from each other, told me that whatever I do, I should not call an ambulance if they have a seizure.

I know that even with health insurance, ambulance rides can be expensive since you never know if the ambulance is in-network with your health insurance company. And I understand that generally if you see a doctor after a seizure, you are told that you cannot drive for X months, which is an incredible hardship.

Still, I felt supremely uncomfortable with this request. Ultimately, I agreed to use my best judgment if the need should arise, despite their protests. Thankfully I never had to find out what I’d do, and since then, both employees have moved on.

What’s the right answer here, both as an employer and human worried about another human, and as an employer worried about potential legalities and ramifications?

There are two sides of this. First, individual people with epilepsy know their conditions best, and they may know that there’s nothing the ER can do for them except in more severe situations. That’s often the case! If this comes up again, ask under what circumstances you should call (for example, one common set of guidelines is to only go to the ER if the seizure lasts more than five minutes or there’s a head injury).

The other side is the company’s legal liability; you’d need to loop in HR so they’re aware of what’s been requested and what you’re agreeing to — because at that point you’re acting as an agent of the company, not a private individual. Whenever you have a situation where an employee asks for something related to a medical condition that you’re uncertain about, that’s a flag that it’s probably over your pay grade to navigate on your own.

3. My coworker jokes about suicide

Two months ago I started a new job and really bonded with a coworker we’ll call Mel. Mel and I really get along, and I like her a lot.

The problem is Mel is rather negative — she constantly talks about how she doesn’t want to be doing work or doesn’t want to be here. I know we all feel that way, but she complains frequently. That I can deal with and kind of brush off, especially because I know she does truly like it here, she (like most of us) would just rather be spending her time doing what she wants to do instead of working a 9-5. However, what’s really getting to me is her constant jokes about how she wants to kill herself. The smallest hiccup at work will prompt a response of, “Well, guess I’ll just go off myself,” and she will often mime either hanging herself or shooting herself.

I know she isn’t seriously making suicide threats, she’s just expressing how much she dislikes something that’s happened during the day. However, I have a history of suicidal ideation, and I find it very disturbing to be confronted with these comments multiple times a day.

If I brought this to the attention of the firm partners, I assume they would say something to Mel, but I think it would be very obvious I was the one who complained since I’m new and no one has ever said anything before. From reading your columns, I know your first step is usually to speak to the coworker myself. I was hoping for some pointers about what to say.

Some options:

“Please don’t joke about suicide. You never know if someone around you has been affected by it.”

“Could you please not make that joke? I find it really upsetting.”

“Suicide is a hard topic for a lot of people. I’d be grateful if you didn’t joke about it around me.”

“That’s not a thing to joke about. Please stop saying things like that.”

4. Interviewing when they already know they want to hire someone else

I recently applied for a great role and had two interviews. There is a third round which involves a task.

At the end of the second interview, I asked about the circumstances of the role becoming available, and after a pause they said that someone is already doing the job but is on a temporary contract, and to become permanent HR required them to advertise the role externally. That person is going through the same interview process, but to me it sounds very likely that they just want them to stay and are going through the motions with me and other candidates. After all, they have already been doing the job for a year, so could give much better answers about their ability to perform the role.

I feel quite put out as I’ve spent a lot of time preparing for a role that isn’t even vacant. I wouldn’t have applied if I’d known up-front. Am I justified in feeling my time has been wasted, or is this just normal business practice? I’m wondering whether or not to let their HR team know that this bothered me.

You are justified in feeling annoyed that your time has been wasted and it’s a normal business practice.

A lot of organizations have internal policies requiring them to advertise every position before hiring, even if they’ve already identified someone who’s likely to get the job. The idea is supposed to be to ensure they’re hiring the best person for the job (and also to avoid cronyism), but when the hiring manager complies only with the letter of the policy, not its spirit, it wastes everyone’s time, and it actively subverts the point of having the policy in the first place. Some employers include language in their ads like “a preferred candidate has been identified” so people at least know what’s up before they apply, but others don’t.

That said, even when an employer already has a candidate in mind, sometimes a really good external candidate can still win out. And it’s not always true that a temporary fill-in will always get the job (as we saw earlier this week). But in this particular case, if you’re right that they were just going through motions, they should have been more transparent from the start so you could decide whether you cared to invest your time that way or not.