my coworker tells the same stories over and over, we refuse to give references, and more

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

1. My coworker tells the same stories over and over

I have a colleague in my small department who tells the same stories over and over again. I know we all do this and it’s just a bit of human nature, but she is taking it to an extreme degree.

How it usually works is she will tell a story to each of us three other people in the department individually. Then she’ll tell it to us as a group when we’re having lunch. Then she’ll say, “Can you believe that?” and then immediately tell the same story word for word again. That story will be repeatedly told twice at a time at least twice a week to us same three people. This will go on for months with the same story. There are some stories I’ve heard 20+ times.

They’re good stories! We have an interesting job where some wild stuff happens. I’d also be fine to hear it individually, then hear it around a few different groups of people! But I truly cannot even bring myself to react to a story that I and everyone around me has heard this many times.

She’s had a very rough time since starting with the company two years ago and has come to me crying over her anxiety about people not liking her. I don’t want to add to this anxiety, but I also know I’m pulling back from her because of this storytelling. Is there a kind way to say I never want to hear these five stories on your roster again?

When she starts in on a story you’ve all heard a million times before, one option is to interject with something like, “Oh, you’ve told us this — it’s a great story and it cracked me up! I think you’ve told us all though.” And then ideally you’d immediately follow that up with something that moves the conversation along (for example, “Did you ever hear back from him after all that happened?”) since that (a) demonstrates an interest in continuing to talk with her so you’re not just shutting her down and (b) doesn’t leave her sitting there unsure of what to say next.

Other options:
• “You’ve told me this story before, but I love ___ (insert some specific detail about it).”
• “This is where X happened, right? … That reminds me of (new topic).”

That said, this sounds like a deeply ingrained habit and probably isn’t something you’ll be able to fix, so you’ll have to decide if you’re willing to risk hurting her feelings to some degree in the process of reining it in.

2. We check references, but we won’t provide references ourselves

I’ve been the executive director for a small to midsize nonprofit for two years. In working with my staff to review and update our policies and procedures, I came across a section in our employee manual that gave me pause. It says that when contacted for references, we will only confirm dates of employment but nothing else. I find myself uncomfortable with this for a number of reasons: one, I’ve never heard of this type of policy before in my 25+ year career in multiple for-profit and nonprofit sectors; and two, we as an organization ask for reference checks when hiring! I know for a fact that the organization contacted my references when I was in the hiring process as well.

In talking with some of my peer EDs at our sister organizations in the region, the feedback was mixed. Two of the four did not have any sort of policy like this and didn’t see a need to update their current policies to change. One had just changed their policies to mirror ours under direction from both an HR consultant and their legal team. To my understanding, this is due to liability if you were to give a negative reference and the former employee sued.

I know how much weight is put on the feedback from a former employer and find myself really uncomfortable with not having the option/ability to give a reference. Is this pushback/refusal to give references bananapants or am I in the wrong in wanting to do so? And if we don’t give them, is it wrong to require others to give them?

Yes, it’s absurd. It’s perfectly legal to give honest references in the U.S. People can sue for anything, but giving and receiving references is a very normal and routine part of hiring.

Perhaps more importantly, it’s egregiously hypocritical (not of you! of the organization) to ask for references when hiring — thus clearly recognizing the value of them — but refuse to give them for your own employees! The solution to that isn’t to just stop asking for them yourself, because the issue is with the other half of the policy: refusing to provide references hamstrings your employees’ ability to build their careers elsewhere, and it hamstrings fellow employers (including, perhaps, allied organizations in your field).

Related:
don’t check references? here’s a horror story for you

3. I tried to deal with an ant infestation and it went badly

My school staff room has ants. They’ve had ants in one specific corner for a while, but over the summer they blossomed into a true infestation. Killing one only summoned hundreds more.

Leadership did nothing for a week. So I bought in some ant powder with me when I came in to work — relatively early — and sprinkled it on a curious ant approaching my desk. Forgive me, I hadn’t used the stuff before. I didn’t realize it was meant to a) summon the little buggers towards it and b) leave them in a slowly growing heap of twitching horror. I’ve wiped down the surface twice today and every time I come back there are more ants dying on that stretch. The only saving grace is that its a narrow strip of sideboard joining two desks, rather than a desk itself. (I clean up the corpses every time I come back.) Am I going to get fired? I just wanted an ant-free workplace.

No, you’re not going to get fired. You tried to solve a problem, it went differently than you anticipated, you’re cleaning it up.

As a general rule, though, don’t distribute toxic chemicals in your workplace if you’re not someone who’s been specifically authorized to do that.

4. Requesting medical accommodations to keep my job requirements the same

I’ve been working for the same organization for several years. Expectations for internal documentation of our work with clients have been relatively consistent and manageable for me.

I have multiple chronic illnesses that intermittently cause sleep problems, brain fog, fatigue, and a general lack of being “with it” for several days at a time. I am working with my medical provider to find the most effective treatments to mitigate these symptoms but it’s a work in progress and these symptoms will likely still affect me on some level.

I am typically able to work and keep up with client deliverables during these times; when I haven’t, I’ve communicated proactively and gotten the work to them within a few days with little to no impact on the quality of the deliverable — it just takes me more time and energy during a flare. I’ve not had any negative client feedback about this, and my manager has never brought up the timing or quality of my work.

I’ve been able to successfully manage my chronic conditions because I’ve set up my workflow to build in time during the week to catch up on internal documentation if it’s a week an illness is flaring so that I can prioritize client deliverables. If nothing is flaring, I use that time for supporting coworkers as appropriate and professional development. This has been humming along for several years, with me increasing in both education level and responsibility (more challenging/complex external clients that bring in more revenue, more independent work requiring less oversight, more mentoring of folks new to the field).

Enter a management consultant (who has no training, education, or license to do our work) who has decided there will now be deadlines for internal documentation of deliverables that apply to the entire organization (my clients, Group A, and another subset, Group B), regardless of client or organizational need. These deadlines make sense for my colleagues in Group B, and that expectation has already been in place for years for them. But apparently we are now all subject to these deadlines and and are all now being auto-audited based on this deadline and receiving “follow-ups” with the consultant when those deadlines are not met, even if they’re not applicable for our clients and have zero effect on organizational needs. Our deliverables are still high quality and the organization is still able to bill for our work as seamlessly as it has been for years. I know this to be true based on access to internal dashboards for all our accounts and their billing.

I really don’t want this seemingly arbitrary rule and the resulting audits to negatively impact my internal metrics or my ability to prioritize deliverables during an illness flare. Can I request ADA accommodations that are basically, “Please let me continue doing everything I thoughtfully set up and that was working swimmingly for the organization, the clients, and myself for literal years before the management consultant inserted themself”? To my knowledge, there would be no “undue hardship” for the organization — they just have to not arbitrarily change things that have no bearing on how I have been successfully doing my job for years.

If that’s something I can request, do you have suggestions for more productive language to use given that my feelings about the management consultant and their “process improvements” are clearly not neutral? I just want to keep the same level of flexibility that I’ve had and that has worked well for years.

Yes, you absolutely can request that as an accommodation. Frame it as, “Due to medical needs ABC, I’m requesting a formal accommodation under the ADA to continue doing XYZ, as this has allowed me to successfully manage my work for the past three years.” Leave out the consultant and their credentials/lack thereof; just state what you’re proposing, why it’s necessary, and that there’s already a track record of it working.

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