HR says our horrible coworker is unfireable, employee is getting credit for work I had to completely redo, and more

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

1. HR says our horrible coworker is “unfireable”

My coworker was hired just over a year ago, and since then he has managed to piss off and/or alienate every single person in our department. He is rude and dismissive, especially toward his female colleagues (honestly, his behavior smacks of misogyny). He went to HR about a conversation on Teams, and the resulting investigation ended with our department director being reprimanded, which was completely ridiculous. Things have only gotten worse; just yesterday he tried to accuse other people on the team of not doing their jobs, and in the process said something to me that was way out of line.

I am considering going to HR, but there are two problems: he sued a previous employer for wrongful termination, so we know he’s litigious, and he apparently has some sort of disability; these two things, according to our HR department, essentially make him un-fireable. This situation is unsustainable and I have no idea where to turn at this point. We can’t all quit.

If your HR department really thinks he’s unfireable, they’re incompetent. People with disabilities aren’t unfireable; employers just need to be able to show that the reason the person was fired wasn’t because of the disability. That would require HR to do their job and ensure that this guy is given clear feedback, time to improve, and warnings about the consequences if he doesn’t, and that they document all those conversations and exactly what the problems were. They either don’t want to bother doing that, which would be negligent of them, or they don’t understand the basics of employment law enough to be in their jobs. Either way, they suck.

As for what you can do, your and your coworkers should keep bringing the problems to your manager and to HR. Make it more of a pain for them to ignore you all than to it is to ignore the problems with your coworker, and it’s possible (although not guaranteed) that you could eventually get traction.

2. My employee is getting credit for work I had to completely redo

I have a fairly new (not yet a year) employee who was hired, in part, to do some basic design and layout work. She recently embarked on her first bigger project, and when I reviewed the drafts, I ended up completely redoing them because they weren’t up to par with what we would typically produce. I sent them over to her, and she sent them along.

The team that received the designs is now emailing both of us to share what an amazing job she did, how she exceeded expectations, they’re so beautiful, etc. It’s clear that she didn’t note then or now how the files were built. It’s not necessarily about the credit — I recognize that I get compensated in other ways and it’s more important that credit, like gifts, flow downward. Yet, the lack of acknowledgement still bothers me — it feels dishonest, somehow. I try to always give credit where credit is due to the team, collaborators, even freelance vendor partners.

I’m trying to let it go but each new email sets off another wave of discomfort. Is this a red flag or am I being overly sensitive about meaningless “credit”? Does being the boss in this situation mean that I just should be pleased that a stakeholder is happy with the work that got done? She’s struggling in other ways so that may also be coloring my perception in this situation.

I don’t think it’s a problem that the other team is crediting her, but I’m curious about whether she realizes that you completely redid the work — less because she shouldn’t be accepting credit for work she didn’t do and more because she’s much less likely to learn and improve if she doesn’t pay attention to the changes you made and why. And if she didn’t pay attention to that and now she’s hearing glowing praise, that’s going to make it harder for you to coach her.

So: did you highlight to her the changes you made and is she aware that you ended up completely redoing the work? If not, that’s something you should do differently in the future, since she won’t learn otherwise. If you did do that and she knows the final work was a lot more yours than hers, it’s possible she’s not saying anything in response to the other team’s praise because she feels awkward about it. But the question of what you’ve ensured she knows is a lot more important than what the team receiving the work knows.

3. Will I be fired for saying a coworker wasn’t choosing their battles well?

Last year, I said to someone that a coworker’s unexpected rudeness felt like they weren’t choosing their fights very efficiently. I was light-hearted and meant it more about how some people don’t choose their battles well. Well, one year later, it turns out some ex-coworkers overheard this and told HR I threatened to fight this person. I actually didn’t even remember saying it until I was contacted asking if I threatened violence to my coworker.

I will be more careful about the type of language I use at work in the future, but is this something the average person would get fired for if no prior complaints exist? I denied that I’d ever threaten a coworker and said that this feels very out of character for me, and I’m happy to cooperate with an investigation to confirm it. I understand if I end up with a warning, but my coworkers reporting this as violence really feels like a stretch when this isn’t an uncommon phrase. I’ve never raised my voice or yelled or been aggressive at work at all. I distanced myself from those three coworkers because I wanted to keep things professional, and suspect this is retaliation for that decision. I’ve never been an investigation subject, and my performance reviews assert my professionalism.

Any advice on how to calmly defend myself and/or perspective on if you’d fire an employee for this sort of thing would be appreciated. I’m probably overthinking it but I’m honestly really disheartened that my coworkers would go after my livelihood over a misunderstanding from over a year ago.

It’s extraordinarily unlikely that you’ll be fired over this. Your company has to investigate it because of what they were told, but you can simply explain: you used the very, very common phrase “choose their battles” and it had nothing to do with violence or threats. You can also tell HR that you suspect the report may be retaliation after you distanced yourself from the colleagues who reported it. Assuming you’re known to be reasonably level-headed (and it sounds like you are) and your manager and others know this would be out of character for you, it isn’t likely to turn into a big deal.

4. My employer says we don’t need to pay unauthorized overtime

I just had an argument with my boss (director level) and our payroll manager about paying employees overtime. There was recently a directive that “overtime is not approved.” I completely understand that and notified my team that they should arrive and depart at their scheduled times and take their lunch breaks.

My hourly employees are scheduled to work an eight-hour day. Their schedule is built into our timekeeping software. If someone clocks in early or late, I have to approve the punch in order for them to be paid for the extra time (or to acknowledge that they were late). The problem is that if, for example, someone clocks in five minutes early or leaves 10 minutes late even a couple times a week, that puts them in to overtime. My boss and payroll manager don’t want me to approve these punches, which would result in the employee not getting paid for the overtime they work. My understanding of the law is that they must be paid. The Department of Labor website specifically says that if someone stays late to finish up a project, that time must be paid. But my payroll manager says that because we said overtime wasn’t approved, then it’s on the employee to not work overtime and we aren’t going to pay it. My boss told me that I’m “the only one” who does this. “No one else” approves punches that don’t align with their employees’ schedules.

I’m not comfortable not paying hourly employees for all the time they work. I know the solution is to make sure my employees are not going over 40 hours per week, even by a few minutes. But I feel gaslit and could use some reassurance that an employer can’t just choose to not pay overtime when someone has earned it.

There’s not even a little bit of grey here. The law is very, very clear: employers must pay non-exempt employees for all time they work, even unapproved overtime. They can discipline them for working unapproved overtime, or even fire them, but the law strictly requires that they be paid for it.

If you do see someone clocked in early or late, one option you have is to send them home early by an equivalent amount of time within the same pay period, thereby keeping them out of overtime status. You also should make it really, really clear to your employees that they need to stop doing this. But if they work overtime anyway, the law doesn’t give your company the option of not paying it.

5. When can I announce my new job?

I have had a long job search and finally scored a great job! But with a delayed start date in November, when can I share it on my socials? I am a tiny bit paranoid with The World Happening that something may delay it/cause it to go away (just sheer paranoia, not in any specific field), but also can’t wait to share I am finally Done Searching.

I did share with my references and have signed the offer letter, passed the background check, and have had the manager connect with me on Linkedin to say hi, but I am dying to let my field know I am back, baby!

When you’re considering sharing any news that could potentially fall through at some point, a good rule is to decide based on how bothered you’d be to have to go back and update people later (or to field questions about how the job is going when in fact the job fell through, etc.). If you like the idea of announcing it now more than you dislike the idea of potentially having to share a disappointing update later, then go ahead and announce it. And that’s the most cautious approach, since chances are better than not that it won’t fall through.

That said, there’s potentially some upside to waiting a month or two before you announce: if you’ve been talking to other employers and there’s any chance one of them might come back to you with an offer, or someone in your network might have a perfect job lead that you’d want to pursue despite the job waiting for you in November, there’s an argument for waiting a little longer (on the theory that if they see you announce it now, they might assume you’re not interested in those other things).

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