my office is infested with wasps, whispering in meetings, and more

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

1. My office is infested with wasps

I work in a field where telework for any reason has been prohibited by our CEO. We can telework and did throughout the lockdown portion of the pandemic, but he’s aggressively against it now. Some offices and some supervisors are more lax about allowing it, but mine are not.

Separately, our building has been harboring a reoccurring wasp infestation. Every summer, the building fills up with wasps. I guess my employer has complained about this to our landlord, and in response the landlord has used canned, commercially available wasp sprays a couple of times, administered by our building’s maintenance team. At no point in the five or so years of this occurring has anyone involved a professional pest control company. My employer acts as though this is not their problem and not something they can fix, and that their only recourse is to ask the landlord to address it.

I don’t feel like this is adequate. Some employees have been issued those electric flyswatters to attack the wasps. One was left on my desk as though to make the wasps my problem.

Here’s the thing: it’s not that I’m scared of wasps, although I am. I can work despite being afraid. The problem is this: I am allergic to wasps. It is in my medical record that I am allergic to wasps. I carry epi-pens, which I have to pay for out of my own pocket, because I am allergic to wasps.

In the past, I had permission to go home and telework when the wasps were out. It wasn’t always practical to do. That permission has been revoked. Work isn’t even sharing information about the wasps or addressing any of this widely — I only know about the wasps being back because others warned me, and I had to beg my supervisor to even tell me if anything is going on.

I don’t know what to do, other than tell my coworkers how to use an epi-pen and where to find mine. Should my supervisors be doing more? Should my employer? I feel like I’m losing my mind.

What on earth?! They’re just accepting having a wasp-filled building year after year and not insisting that a professional exterminator be called? Or just calling one themselves?

This is so absurd that I wrote back to this letter-writer and asked if wasps were a stand-in for something else to help keep them anonymous but nope, it’s wasps.

So first and foremost: can you and your coworkers band together and push for a professional to be called? Say you feel unsafe and you’re not willing to work surrounded by wasps.

But as for you specifically, go the formal accommodations route! Talk to HR, use the words “formal request for accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act,” and explain you’re allergic to wasps and it’s not safe for you to continue working around them and you need a wasp-free spot to work in. They can decide how to achieve that, whether it’s letting you work from home, finding a wasp-free space in your current building, or calling a damn exterminator.

2. Whispering in classes vs. whispering in work meetings

This is a question about how a situation I’m dealing with in academia would transfer to the rest of the working world. In my college classes, I have a few students (underclassmen, but still adults) who consistently whisper/giggle through the lesson, sometimes when I’m not paying attention to them but sometimes when I obviously am! I’ve tried various things, like asking in the moment if they’re ready to participate, emailing after class, or warning about the impact on their grades, and this has decreased the volume but not stopped the behavior. I’m probably going to escalate to asking them to leave class or putting in a formal report with the administration (which is fairly standard practice at my school). These are short classes with 30-40 students, and I try to use a lot of interactive activities to break up the lectures (although I think I should expect them to listen even if I lectured the whole time).

What I’m wondering, as I’m trying to gauge the right response, is how this would be dealt with in a work context? I assume they’d be firmly warned about the behavior, probably in private (not easy for me to facilitate, since I only see them in class and I know some of them don’t read email), but then what? Could someone be fired for obviously whispering through large meetings or trainings every day, despite warnings? I want to take seriously my responsibility to prepare these students for the working world, and I’m also just always curious about how things work outside the strange bubble of academic life!

In a work context, they’d either be spoken to privately afterwards or directly asked mid-meeting to stop, depending on how disruptive the behavior was. In theory it’s something someone could be fired over if it continued, but in reality it’s very unlikely that it would get to that point — that’s just not something that tends to happen a lot at work; once someone has been asked to stop a few times, they tend to stop. That’s probably because the stakes feel higher at work.

I’m not an expert on teaching, but in your shoes I’d just ask them directly in middle of class to quiet down so they’re not distracting others. If they continue after that, ask them to leave so they’re not disrupting people who are trying to learn. If not being in class impacts their grades, that’s a natural consequences of the behavior — but I don’t think you need all the separate stuff about warning the whispering itself will impact their grades, reporting it to the administration (which feels like overkill, even if it’s standard practice at your school), or even teaching them a lesson about how it would go over at work.

As college students, whether or not they’re learning is up to them. But controlling your class environment so people who want to learn can learn is up to you, and you should just tell them in the moment to stop or leave.

3. A colleague’s name and mine are so similar that clients mix us up

I am one of four people at my company who do my job: think, four vets and a number of assistants and office staff. Pet owners don’t have to request a specific vet, but they often do. It’s in my best interest for people who ask for me to get to see me: it’s better customer service plus the numbers will eventually shake out into next year’s salary. The problem: my last name is extremely similar to the last name of one of the other vets. (Think Dr. Thomas vs. Dr. Thompson.) To make it even worse, we bear a slight resemblance to each other. Nobody who knew us would have trouble telling us apart, but we are the same general physical type. She is also more charismatic than me and, I’ll just say it, somewhat more popular with clients.

So, we get a steady stream of people who ask to see her, when I think they meant to ask to see me, except what if they really are asking to see her? There are a few clients who have seen us both and prefer her, and a smaller number of people who have seen both and prefer me, and some who probably don’t care but she will end up with that appointment for reasons outside of my control.

We can’t use pseudonyms like they do in customer service, because our real names have to be findable for various regulatory reasons. This has been going on for years and I’m no closer to a solution. Any ideas?

Would you be willing to use your first name — as in Dr. Jane or similar? I know it’s not traditional in medicine, but it’s also not unheard of — and it may be the easiest way to help people differentiate between you!

4. Taking sick days as a new employee

I began a new job about three months ago. It is a higher level position that requires board certification, if that matters. I currently have a mild respiratory infection. Though I have been to a doctor and tested negative for both flu and Covid, I have opted to take two days off. I simply do not feel up to performing at my full ability, and I am also trying to keep my germs to myself. Prior to taking time off, several coworkers noticed that I looked visibly ill and was losing my voice, and I have a note from my doctor. However, I am mostly worried about optics, since I am still relatively new.

In my last position, which I held for almost four years, I rarely took time off. That was my own choice, as I truly enjoyed being at work. However, when I left, I found myself unable to cash out all of my unused PTO due to a recently implemented policy. I am trying to set healthy boundaries for myself this time around, one of those being utilizing my available time off. My question is, in this situation of being a new-ish employee, does it reflect poorly on me to take these two days off?

You’re three months in. You’re obviously sick. You have nothing to worry about!

Frankly, even if it were your third week rather than your third month, people get sick! Your body doesn’t halt all illnesses just because you’re new to a job, and you’re not expected to come to work sick (and potentially infect others) just because you’re new. It’s not ideal to miss work when you’re new, but it happens. And you’re three months in; this is a non-issue.

Related:
Getting sick your first week at a new job

5. Job ads with a single number instead of a salary range

I’m job hunting for the first time in years and have been glad to see that many companies are including salary information in their job postings. However, a couple of times I’ve seen something that I’m not sure how to interpret: instead of listing a salary range, there’s a single figure listed. Should I take this to mean the number is firm or close to it, or go in assuming that that number is some part of what’s actually a range for the position (and if so, what point in the range is it likely to be?)? Why do companies do this?

Sometimes the number is firm (particularly in companies with policies around salary equity, where they want/need to ensure that people doing the same job at the same level aren’t compensated differently just because one person negotiated better than someone else). Sometimes it’s more indicative of the general range. You can’t really know from the outside, but in general it makes to assume that even if it’s a range, it’s a range pretty close to the number they named.

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