Working in an office with a culture of "no complaints"

[NotKelly]

I don't know what to do. I work in an office where the culture is "everyone be nice to each other, nobody ever complain." It's a tiny struggling department where everyone has worked there for 10 yrs or more and they're all "friends" or some such like, and you're not supposed to talk smack about anybody...

 

Trouble is, there is MUCH to complain about. Particularly one lazy co-worker I am forced to work with on a daily project, who one day acts like she's in charge (officially she is, but I do most of the actual work) and then the next day doesn't bother to do what little work she's supposed to do. She comes in late every other day (the project has to be completed and sent by a certain time each morning) and then when she wanders in she asks "Oh, did you send it out?" Meanwhile, I have my OWN personal tasks to work on first thing in the morning. (this thing is very time sensitive so it has to go out before a particular time)

 

Even more infuriating, she has a tendency to take vacation or sick days off and not notify me ahead of time. I mean, just out of courtesy I let people know when I'm out. When I call in sick, I e-mail relevant people that I work with and CC them on my note to my boss. How hard is it for this woman to have the simple courtesy to inform me, her partner on this project, directly when she will not be there?

 

I also have to remind her of things over and over again, to send me material that I just asked her for a half hour before, etc etc. that she knows have to be done EVERY day at the same time.

 

The problem is we get along fine. It's just that she's lazy. She obviously hates the project. Well, so do I, but it still has to get done.

 

I know I should be saying something... and I know I will be perceived as an old bitch... No one appears to really be in charge of the operation, and that scares me. We have an absent boss who is always called away for crisis type things, he really has no idea of how projects are or aren't managed. Simply put, if anyone makes a mistake, they do not get in trouble. If a mistake is brought to our boss' attention by someone else, he sends us ALL an e-mail telling us to make sure it doesn't happen again. That is really unfair. The person who is responsible for the mistake never gets confronted and they just keep doing it over and over.

 

What I am really sick of is having to catch all this woman's sloppy mistakes and then being blamed when she slacks off and gets something wrong or I make mistakes because I'm rushing through her work. I am dying for an opportunity to snag 5 minutes of Absent Boss' time and give him a piece of my mind, but I'm afraid I would just wind up criticizing the entire place.

 

I know this is a lousy job and I know there is just so much good I can make of it, but the job situation in my town is really bad and I can't leave because I have family members relying on me. I'm trying to stay sane but it's very hard to do in an office where no one ever complains about anything. How do you break the ice without overdoing it?

[Angel1111]

It's great to have this 'nice' culture if it's for real. But when it's not for real and problems aren't addressed, then things will appear nice on the surface but will be festering underneath. One day, the volcano will explode.

 

Since you're not this woman's boss and since she seems to be in charge of the project, why don't you suggest to her that the two of you write down the things that you're responsible for on the project, and the things that she's responsible for. Tell her that you're a little confused about what's expected of you, and of how things are being done and that you would be able to function better if things were clarified. If she does that, then when you both agree on duties, shoot her an email later that day outlining the things you discussed and agreed on. If it's appropriate, you may want to copy her boss on it - but I can't tell you if that would be the thing to do or not. You know the situation better than I do.

 

Deciding who does what keeps things organized and equalizes the amount of work on each person. If she's in charge of the project, you may want to tell her that you're concerned about how things are going and that you don't want to see things not get done and see her get in trouble. I don't know if that will have any effect but it will tell her that you have her interests in mind. Not that you do but it doesn't matter. If she's too dumb to realize that she's not doing her share and is actually hindering the project, then she's probably too dumb to realize much else.

 

As far as everything else is concerned, maybe you can bring things up as they occur. There is a backward kind of way to approach things that can actually make people feel like you're trying to help them, instead of the fact that their behavior is childish. I deal with this every now and then and I have to sit and think for awhile before I can address it in such a way that people don't feel bad about themselves. That just rarely gets good results. So if you can figure out the 'back door' to addressing things, that will go a long way to making your work life more tolerable.

 

Trying to suck up problems will never work and since the management at the office is basically out to lunch, you're going to have to handle things yourself in a subtle and supportive way. But you never know, this may ultimately get you noticed and promoted.

[monkey00]

No matter how professional you are at your job, there will always be someone who's unprofessional or gets on your nerves. That's exactly how my office environment is, everyone is expected to have a 'can-do' attitude.

 

At my job there's a particular person who's like that every now and then. She runs the marketing dept. which is solely herself and her assistant. I don't work in her dept, or work under her at all. Every now and then I have to do her dirty work, when she clearly knows how to do it such as operating machinery to cut print materials or using software to execute her ideas which she knows how to. Because she's not my supervisor I can confront her, and I have a couple of times if she goes too far with abusing company resources (which would be me).

 

Though she always reports back to the boss of the company on approving things before they go out. If anything goes wrong on her end, she is able to complain to the boss. Anyway I'm supposed to have an evaluation coming up...and thank god, I can report all that I've done towards a salary raise, he knows what I do for the company.

 

At the end of the day, sometimes you just have to suck it up and stick with the program. I think if your situation is causing a disruption of the work flow or jeopardizes your ability to do your job efficiently I think you should tell someone who's able to recognize the problem and do something about fixing it, in your situation that woman.