office music is too repetitive, coworker is taking advantage of flexibility, 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. Our communal music is too repetitive

I work in a creative department at a fairly conservative company and am in the office four days each week. My coworkers and I share an enclosed space with individual cubicles. Much of my job involves writing. Though I can often write without “locking in,” “getting in the zone,” etc., sometimes I do really need to focus with minimal distraction.

Recently, a coworker brought in a small bluetooth speaker, and we have taken turns playing music to liven up the space a bit. My manager is fully on board. To make it easier and spend less time fiddling with bluetooth, we’re using a shared device to connect to Spotify. My coworkers – understandably – are not taking too much time to find and select music to play. They come in, press play on the device, and let the playlist roll.

I love listening to music. I don’t love listening to the same playlist over, and over, and over again. But it apparently only bothers me to hear the same songs day in and out. I will try and put on other music, which helps for a bit, but eventually we find our way back to the “default” playlist, which I guess is based off what you have played previously on the platform (It’s only about 150-200 songs). When this happens, I can barely focus on what I’m doing. I’ll pull out my own ear buds, but they tend to mix with the music on the speaker and make the problem worse.

I really don’t want to be the person that needs to turn off the music. This seems like something my coworkers really enjoy, based on how often they’re finding their way back to turn on the speaker after it’s been off for the day or after a meeting. But it’s beginning to make me hate certain songs that I had no feeling about previously, let alone the effect on my productivity. I guess the solution is just to get up and change the music when it starts bothering me — but I worry I’ll come off as overly concerned about playing DJ when really, I just don’t want to listen to “Bittersweet Symphony” for the fifth time this week!

If it really becomes a problem, I know that I would be able to just say I need some quiet for a bit and turn it off. But do you have any suggestions for how to handle that without being the office spoilsport?

I think you’re overthinking it! Just say, “Y’all, I love having the music on but I can’t take so much repetition, so I’m going to take charge of switching up the playlists unless someone else wants to” and then do that. It shouldn’t be a big deal. If anything, people will probably appreciate it.

Alternately, spend some time this weekend making a ridiculously huge 30-hour playlist and then never think about it again.

But it’s also okay to say that having music on all the time isn’t working for you! Having to write while subject to someone else’s musical choices would be rough for a lot of writers.

2. Coworker is taking advantage of our WFH flexibility

I lead a highly engaged team of exempt employees that work remotely ~90% of the time. Our department is very supportive of work/life balance and doesn’t penalize for things like doctor’s appointments or getting kids off the bus. As long as meetings are covered and work gets done, it’s all good. We have a few required in-office days each month which occur on a regular, predicable cadence.

One team member bends this flexibility more than anybody else. Although their work output is good, there have been several instances of this person sending the team a list of sporadic upcoming times that they may not be available during the day due to their child’s daytime extracurricular activities. This once resulted in a last-minute scramble to move an important meeting that had been scheduled weeks ago. Another time, they asked our manager to be exempt from all in-office days for a couple of months to accommodate a different voluntary, child-related activity (manager said no). This employee recently called into another important meeting but couldn’t be heard over the background noise. They were out of the house on an errand that could have happened at another time.

I reported this to our manager (who agrees with me) but can’t help wondering if I’m being unfair. If this person was working around something more necessary and immovable, like healthcare needs, I wouldn’t think twice. I don’t care if people work from a public place like a coffee shop or library as long as they can be fully engaged in meetings. I don’t have kids myself but have never encountered anybody else who has required this level of daytime flexibility for non-essential activities. Nobody else on the large-ish team does this.

I understand that if this person had just quietly blocked their calendar without providing any details, I would probably not be writing to you … but here we are. Is there any way to equitably standardize what appropriate flexibility looks like, or should I just erase the details from my brain and pretend they’re shuttling the kids back and forth from doctor’s appointments?

Extracurriculars are different from medical appointments. It’s reasonable to say that while your team tries to allow employees flexibility with life stuff that comes up during the day, including kid-related needs, people are expected to prioritize important meetings, participate in in-office days, and take work calls from a quiet place where they can focus and without disruptive background noise, in all but the most unusual/unavoidable of circumstances. And it’s reasonable to define “unusual/unavoidable” as medical things or rare personal emergencies.

Since your manager seems to agree with that, she needs to clarify those expectations with your coworker, who seems to be translating some flexibility into total flexibility.

3. HR has implemented a screening test for applicants that nobody can pass

Several months ago, our HR department implemented a screening test for all applicants that they must pass before being hired. This is a timed test, and the questions and acceptance criteria are the same for all jobs. None of the hiring managers had seen the test or knew anything about the questions when it was implemented.

Only about 5% of screened applicants have passed the test. As you might imagine, this is causing issues with hiring managers as they are unable to fill open positions with candidates they have already evaluated and identified as good hires.

There has been such disruption that HR decided to have all current employees take the test and use the average score to consider adjusting the acceptance criteria (individual scores are supposed to remain anonymous). This was the first time any of us had seen the test questions, and now it is clear why applicants are not passing. Most, if not all, of the questions do not pertain to the jobs we are hiring for. There are math word problems, word analogy problems, inductive reasoning pattern problems used to screen engineers, logic puzzles, etc., all with a big timer counting down the available time at the top of the screen.

I see a LOT of issues with this. The aptitudes and abilities being tested are not relevant for all positions, and some are not relevant for any positions at our company. (Nobody here needs to know the exact definition of “obfuscate” as part of their job.) It is biased against candidates who are functionally fluent in English but use it as their second language. It is biased against candidates who would perform their jobs well but do not perform well on timed tests. It may not be illegal, but I can’t see how it is useful.

I raised these concerns with HR, and also told them that if this test had been required when I applied to my position several years ago, I likely would have withdrawn my application. I would have seen it as a huge red flag that my performance would not be evaluated objectively based on the job requirements but on random criteria instead. I suspect many applicants are either not completing the test or choosing answers at random because they have similar concerns.

Am I off-base that this is a bad practice? Is there anything else I can do as a hiring manager to convince HR to change this practice?

You are not off-base; this is ridiculous. It’s a fundamental principle of hiring effectively that you screen based on the must-have’s and nice-to-have’s for the role you’re hiring for, not on factors that have nothing to do with someone’s ability to perform the job. Coincidentally, that also happens to be a fundamental principle of ensuring you have a diverse workforce with diverse perspectives.

HR shouldn’t have this kind of power. You and other hiring managers should push back hard, pointing out that HR’s job is to support managers in hiring people who will perform their jobs well, not to throw up roadblocks to finding and hiring those people. Insist on hearing a justification for the test and why it should trump your own assessment of what you need in candidates, insist on seeing data about outcomes, and escalate it as high as you need to.

4. Adult photos at work

Is showing a coworker a nude pic of a celebrity considered sexual harassment?

If they don’t want to see it, yes. If there are people nearby who don’t want to see it or hear about it, yes.