updates: the ignored harassment, the overly talkative coworker, and more

It’s a special “where are you now?” season at Ask a Manager and I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Here are four updates from past letter-writers.

1. A colleague is harassing female coworkers, and the person I reported it to didn’t seem too concerned

Thank you so much for answering my question last year. I was hoping to have a more satisfying update by now, but progress is being slowly made. First of all, I did take your advice to check in with Amy (and other staff members) to let them know we are addressing Ben’s behavior and to continue to let management know if there are issues. And there have been! Several more women have mentioned that Ben has made sexual jokes or references to his sex life to them. Enough people talked to Clara about this that she actually went to HR herself, so I didn’t need to go over her head to get them involved. She has a script from HR and has promised to meet with him, but has been dragging her feet on it. I mention it pretty regularly in our Admin meetings (every other week), but there are two other staff that are in the process of getting PIPs, so I feel like addressing Ben has been put on the back burner. If I were Ben’s supervisor, I think I could push for meeting with him sooner but right now I feel like asking if there’s an update during our meetings is all I can do. (And yes, I find it just as frustrating that his supervisor is ignoring the entire issue, but she’s also the supervisor dealing with the two PIPs.)

On a positive note, as Amy has been here longer, she’s feeling more comfortable around Ben. In a sad way, I think it helps that he has said things that qualify as sexual harassment to other people, including in group situations, so it feels less targeted to her. Thank you for your advice and the reassurance that what Ben was doing was harassment that could open us up to legal trouble so I had a path for moving forward. I wanted to make sure Amy (and everyone else on staff) knew I would stand up for them, and your advice gave me the language I needed for both the staff and Clara.

2. My coworker floods me with social messages all day every day

Things have gotten a lot less annoying! Kara’s multiple-per-day messages have shifted to being 99% complaints about work. Still the “ugh, extremely normal thing we do 50 times a day! How annoying!” type of complaints, 5-6 times per day. I just entirely don’t respond to these messages, or complaints about coworkers, or whatever.

I’ve stood up for myself more when she gets nosy or asks for “updates” on my life — “Nope, nothing interesting,” etc.

I actually did mention the behavior to my supervisor, and turns out she also does this to my supervisor! So I’m assuming she was potentially spoken to about it. For a while, I would vent like One Complaint A Week to her, and she would instantly get very weirdly invasive and demand things like the information for the account I was complaining about, so she could look herself. And I’m much more confident in saying, “No, that’s weird, I’m just venting!” I now keep most of my complaints to myself, haha. She still kind of micromanages everyone’s work too (“I’m working this account and found a mistake someone made two years ago, time to email Supervisor!”) but as a whole, my work days are a lot more peaceful, and I’m very good at ignoring the irritating and shutting down the straight-up rude. I happily haven’t had a random podcast narrated to me in many months!

3. How do I interview with the person I would be replacing?

The interview process for this role moved quickly; the person who previously held the role was leaving for another opportunity before a big annual event and they were looking to get her successor onboarded in time for that. In the time between my initial writing and your reply, the interview took place. As a longtime reader of your site and a freelancer who interviews a lot, I’ve combed through much of your advice and used it all to prepare for the conversation as much as I could.

It turned out to be closer to the second scenario you described, an opportunity for me to ask her about her experiences in the role and her to share how the role had evolved over time, since the organization had grown a lot since she’d been with them. Coming in with a lot of my own detailed questions absolutely helped!

After that conversation, a week later I went through a third round of screening with the director the role reports to, and was offered the job! I’ve been in it now for about a month, and the person I took over from has been extremely generous with her time and expertise in getting me up to speed to help execute a big piece of their yearly calendar on a relatively short timeframe. My industry is fairly close-knit and has a lot of freelancers who bounce between a handful of orgs, knowing people who have worked in different locations is a big help. So I gained a job and an excellent industry colleague!

Thank you for your reply to my letter and for all your advice over the years, I’ve found it invaluable and have recommended your site to more colleagues than I remember.

4. Should I put a job I left quickly on my resume? (#4 at the link)

I stayed two years in the new company as a staff engineer, and followed your advice: the two months and a half company was removed from my CV and LinkedIn.

I’m happy to share that one year ago I switched to my dream job as a staff engineer at Google, which helped reassure me the manager of the two months and a half company was completely wrong. I still remember her words: “I do not see staff engineer material or level in you.”

The post updates: the ignored harassment, the overly talkative coworker, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.