retiring coworker took credit for our full product line, can I take off my shoes at work, and more

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

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

1. Coworker’s retirement email took credit for our full product line

I received an email from a coworker who is retiring next month. The worker, let’s call him Carl, announced his upcoming retirement and then bragged for a long paragraph about his integral design accomplishments for an important product line. The email includes a smiling photo of Carl standing next to nine products, as though he was the program manager who was responsible for the team of engineers who developed the products for the world to use!

Carl is a draftsman, who followed directives from engineers. The program manager and the engineering team worked long and hard on each product design before meeting with drafts people for drafting implementation (blueprints, CAD, etc.). During weekly reviews, and sometimes more often, Carl reported to an assigned engineer and the two of them worked out any possible glitches or changes for design alterations that we other engineers made.

I believe in team work. Every job is important because every job has different functions when developing and manufacturing products. Working together, we all provided necessary input for each product. I can’t understand how or why Carl believes the product line is his. Worse, I can’t understand why he sent this self-applauding company-wide.

My engineering colleagues are privately laughing at Carl’s email, mostly because they never heard or saw such brazen nonsense. I have to say that it’s the oddest retirement email I ever got. Is sending pictures of your so-called accomplishments (or of your real accomplishments) a new thing? I find it icky, not to mention a morale buster for everyone else on the product team. How should we react publicly to Carl’s news? We aren’t motivated to give him a party because we aren’t going to enable his delusion. We don’t want to mock him, either, because, well, that’s not nice.

Eh, I think you and your coworkers are being a little mean-spirited about it! It doesn’t sound like Carl is trying to take credit for being the product manager; it sounds like he’s saying he’s proud of the projects he’s worked on, and here they are. You want employees to feel ownership and pride in the work they do, whether they’re the ones calling the shots for it or not. Was it a bit much in this context? Maybe! But I don’t think it warrants denying the guy a retirement party.

If I’m wrong and he explicitly took credit for things he didn’t do, that’s different. In that case, laugh away, or roll your eyes, or so forth. Although even then, I don’t think it rises to the level of “no retirement party for you” (unless Carl has generally been a jerk to work with; if he has, feel free not to put any special effort toward celebrating him).

2. Can I take my shoes off behind the counter?

I work at a gas station (overnight shifts 6pm – 6am). During my shift I’m usually behind the counter. During slow nights, I’m sitting at the work computer on my phone between customers. It’s a casual setting and the manager is pretty chill, but I’m curious … being behind the counter so often, can I take off my shoes for a bit during my shift? I usually put them on if I’m going anywhere other than behind the counter, but would it be wrong to let the dogs breathe for a few minutes or till a customer arrives?

The more practical question is whether anyone would know. If no one but you will know, that’s between you and your feet. Just make sure there’s nothing you could step on, for safety/comfort reasons.

But if anyone might see, keep your shoes on; a barefoot attendant isn’t usually the look businesses are going for. (For that reason, “usually” putting your shoes on if you come out from behind the counter really should be “always.”)

3. My coworker won’t help in our shared job

I work in security in a large hospital (we print the ID badges for numerous contractors to have access throughout the hospital), and I work in an open office environment. I’ve worked there almost two years now, and really like my job.

People approach our long desk where my coworkers and I sit, facing the public. There are three of us who do the same job, and we are all cross-trained to do everything that’s needed to get these people badged. That being said, two of us carry the brunt of the work. The third person, Martha, has a serious problem with playing on her cell phone ALL THE TIME. When people approach the desk, they approach Martha’s seat first. She doesn’t acknowledge their presence most of the time, because she is so engrossed in her cell phone, leading to me or the other coworker greeting and helping the person almost every time. The phone rings, and she can’t/won’t answer it, because she is either on her cell phone or talking to her daughter or husband on her business phone.

She always asks why I haven’t asked her to help with anything instead of doing it myself. I don’t feel like it’s my job to delegate work; we are equals in position and she knows what needs to be done. I don’t like confrontation, so I don’t say anything most of the time, leading to resentment because I am literally doing everything. I have said things in the past, yet here we are again. I don’t feel like it’s my place to keep saying things. My boss has a lot of health problems so is hardly ever present to be able to address the issue. I don’t know what to do, as I am running extremely short on patience with this problem. I don’t want to scream and make a scene, but I am done playing these games with her. I need help!

Martha sucks here, but you’re also writing off the only things that will help. Talk to her! I know you said you’ve tried that in the past, but I’m curious how direct you’ve been. Ideally, the next time it’s happening, you’d say, “Could you please not be on your phone when customers come up? When you are, Jane and I end up doing more than our share of the work, because you’re not acknowledging customers when they approach.” You’ll probably need to say this more than once, but that’s not confrontational or out of line; it’s a normal conversation to have about how workload is distributed. It’s not about assigning work to her; it’s saying, “I am doing more than my fair share and I need your help.”

And if you’re at the point of worrying you’re going to scream at her, it’s far kinder to have a calm conversation with her first.

Assuming this doesn’t solve it, though, then you do need to talk to your boss. You say she’s not there much, but the next time she is there, ask to meet in private, explain the problem, and say you’ve tried speaking to Martha about it directly but it’s continuing to happen. (That’s the other advantage of talking to Martha directly first: when you escalate it to your boss, you want to be able to say you’ve tried that.)

4. How to ask a coworker to stop watching me work

The least favorite part of my job is being shadowed. I absolutely hate having people following me around staring at me, and this summer it has been constant, and with multiple people. At one point I had so many people silently watching me working, I came closer than I ever have to walking out on my job. It’s almost over, thank god, interns and assistants have been gotten rid of and/or are going back to school.

However, we have a new receptionist who likes to come back and watch the “fun” procedures, standing around and getting in my way while I’m trying to work. It’s not “fun” for me, it’s my job, and I’m trying to do 100 things at the same time. I’ll admit I don’t particularly like this person and I’m a bit … on edge, due to the near constant aggravation of the last couple of months. I don’t want to be an ogre about it, but her job is at her desk doing her job, not watching me do mine.

Our manager has been missing in action at work lately due to personal stuff, so there’s no use trying to talk to her. Is there a way to nicely ask this person to go do her job and let me do mine? The best I can come up with is some version of, “Hey, I really don’t like being watched while I work, would you mind?” but I’m afraid it will come out through clenched teeth.

That’s actually fine to say, as long as you say it in a reasonably warm tone and not through clenched teeth. Alternately: “I find it distracting to be watched while I work and I am pretty burnt out on being shadowed the last couple months.” Tone is the big thing here — make sure it’s conveying “I like you, just not this specific activity.”

She may very well think you don’t mind being watched, since she’s seen so many other people shadowing you. Let her know you prefer she not.

But also: why have so many people been shadowing you? Is it truly necessary for their training, or is it more optional? Given that you’ve almost been at the point of walking out over it, is there any room to cut back on how much of it falls to you? If I were your manager, I’d want to know if something was happening that had you this on edge.

5. My employee passed their PIP — now what?

I have had an employee, Alex, on a PIP and for once it has done exactly what I hoped: improved performance! I’ve never had that happen before (I’ve done two, and one employee quit and I fired the other). I’m delighted that Alex accomplished what we set out in the PIP; maybe it was the wake-up call they needed.

So, what comes next, when a PIP works? How do you ease back on the PIP-related pressure of Succeed NOW, while also not risking a PIP-slack-PIP cycle? I feel like if we get to the final action date and I tell Alex, “Hey, you’ve done great doing what I asked; if you fail to keep doing that, I’m just going to fire you instead of going through this whole PIP again,” it would be the same as having a perpetual PIP. It doesn’t give Alex a chance to keep doing the job correctly now that they’ve really learned how; it’s just a sword hanging over their head all the time and that feels like a terrible way to work.

What is an effective strategy for after the PIP, when it’s not letting them go?

Ideally when you’re first writing the PIP, you include language like, “If you fulfill the requirements laid out here, you will no longer be on a formal improvement plan but will need to maintain that level of performance over time.” Or, “I need you to demonstrate this improvement in the next X weeks, and then sustain it going forward.”

If you didn’t do that, or in addition to it now, when you’re having the “you passed the PIP!” conversation, you can say, “You’ve done a great job doing XYZ. We do need to see this level of performance sustained over the long-run, and if the problems recur, we would not go through this process all over again. But based on how well you’ve done the last X weeks, I’m confident that you can do that.”