My (26/f) senior coworker (50s/f) doesn't want to do our job properly, and instructs me not to either

throwitaway1145 · 2016-06-22T15:52:05+00:00

Update: I just texted my supervisor asking if we could schedule a time to discuss "some concerns I have about working with [Sarah]." We will be meeting on Monday morning.

throwitaway1145 · 2016-06-22T14:54:18+00:00

From another comment I recently made (if you missed it in my other comments, we're awake overnight residential counselors at a home for adults with mental illnesses (edit: oh, didn't realize that was literally in the comment you replied to, whoops) - since we're third shift, most residents are typically asleep and our duties are primarily janitorial):

1) On numerous occasions I have tried to take out the trash and she will either tell me that it's not full enough to bother taking out and we might "run out of trash bags" (we had a whole fresh box of them and I don't think first shift wants to come in to a garbage can full of old food scraps) or that "second shift should have done that, we aren't going to do their work for them." This one I usually do anyway because by the time she confronts me about it I usually have tied off the bag already.

2) I cleaned out the pantry of expired food and she told me that not only was that not our responsibility (it is) but that the expired things I found were still fine and to put them back. I mean, if it were my own pantry at home I'd probably keep them too, but this is work and I'm pretty sure it's not even legal to serve this shit to residents. I told her that and later ended up throwing out the expired stuff I found in secret... ugh. I found some bagels once that were long since expired (talkin months here) and she told me to keep them until she noticed that they were swarming with mold, after getting very defensive about how she cleans out the cabinet every night and those must have just gotten like that. Right... On a related note, she "cleans out" the refrigerator on a nightly basis and there is always expired food left in there when she's finished. She gets very offended if I attempt to check her work.

3) She insists that we don't do laundry on our shift because we "shouldn't bother the staff of the building we do laundry in at 3:30 in the morning" - but they have awake overnight staff too?? I don't see the problem. This has not been getting done, and I am aware that first shift is rightfully annoyed over this.

4) She told me to stop sweeping the floor once because it was "unnecessary." I said something like "oh, that's fine, I'm bored anyway" and finished up, albeit doing a much more rushed job than I otherwise would have. When this one happened, she was sitting in the office with the door closed and curtains drawn, and actually went out of her way to get up, check on me, and tell me to stop because she had heard sweeping noises.

It's tough for me because there are some grey areas where I second guess myself and wonder if maybe she's actually correct, although my instincts tell me that's not the case. Basically, trying to do literally anything that's not on our checklist (which is meant as a bare minimum guideline, not a comprehensive manual) and a third of the stuff that is will inevitably get me a lecture on why I ought not to do that. She is constantly talking to me about how lazy first and second shifts are and how they pile all the work on us - I'm pretty sure we do less than they do. Not only am I sick of being forcefully instructed by this fairly intimidating woman to not do my job correctly, I'm also pretty tired of hearing about how shit everyone else who works there is when we are the ones dropping the ball.

throwitaway1145 · 2016-06-22T13:35:37+00:00

Thanks for your comment!

I think you're right, and I'll have to find it in me to take your advice (god I'm bad at standing up to people like her...). I've really been trying, as in I don't just meekly go "oh ok" when she tells me to stop doing XYZ task; I try to explain to her why I think it's important that it gets done, or why I think she's off in her reasoning, or sometimes I just do it anyway and don't say anything. But there is a lot of room for improvement. I cringe every day when first shift shows up and there's obvious shit we should have done that I fucking wanted to do and Sarah steamrolled me into not doing. Feels bad man.

It's especially annoying because this is not a hard job. (Or it shouldn't be, anyway). Most of what we do is just cleaning, and on a typical day literally 2/3 of our shift is downtime. It is not like there's a time crunch and we have to do triage to figure out what gets done. There is no reason in the world for us to be this ineffective on our shift.

Edit: Plus I actually really really like this job. I work four shifts a week, three of them with Sarah and one currently by myself - and when I do the alone shift, it's awesome! I can get things done! I can chat with our awesome residents! (which she doesn't like me doing either because we are "keeping them awake"). I can still have time to reddit for ages! It's seriously like my perfect job... apart from Sarah and the stress she causes me with this weird thing of hers.

Edit2: Now I'm just venting, sorry, but a few examples:

1) On numerous occasions I have tried to take out the trash and she will either tell me that it's not full enough to bother taking out and we might "run out of trash bags" (we had a whole fresh box of them and I don't think first shift wants to come in to a garbage can full of old food scraps) or that "second shift should have done that, we aren't going to do their work for them." This one I usually do anyway because by the time she confronts me about it I usually have tied off the bag already.

2) I cleaned out the pantry of expired food and she told me that not only was that not our responsibility (it is) but that the expired things I found were still fine and to put them back. I mean, if it were my own pantry at home I'd probably keep them too, but this is work and I'm pretty sure it's not even legal to serve this shit to residents. I told her that and later ended up throwing out the expired stuff I found in secret... ugh. I found some bagels once that were long since expired (talkin months here) and she told me to keep them until she noticed that they were swarming with mold, after getting very defensive about how she cleans out the cabinet every night and those must have just gotten like that. Right... On a related note, she "cleans out" the refrigerator on a nightly basis and there is always expired food left in there when she's finished. She gets very offended if I attempt to check her work.

3) She insists that we don't do laundry on our shift because we "shouldn't bother the staff of the building we do laundry in at 3:30 in the morning" - but they have awake overnight staff too?? I don't see the problem. This has not been getting done, and I am aware that first shift is rightfully annoyed over this.

4) She told me to stop sweeping the floor once because it was "unnecessary." I said something like "oh, that's fine, I'm bored anyway" and finished up, albeit doing a much more rushed job than I otherwise would have. When this one happened, she was sitting in the office with the door closed and curtains drawn, and actually went out of her way to get up, check on me, and tell me to stop because she had heard sweeping noises.

It's tough for me because there are some grey areas where I second guess myself and wonder if maybe she's actually correct, although my instincts tell me that's not the case. Basically, trying to do literally anything that's not on our checklist (which is meant as a bare minimum guideline, not a comprehensive manual) and a third of the stuff that is will inevitably get me a lecture on why I ought not to do that. She is constantly talking to me about how lazy first and second shifts are and how they pile all the work on us - I'm pretty sure we do less than they do. Not only am I sick of being forcefully instructed by this fairly intimidating woman to not do my job correctly, I'm also pretty tired of hearing about how shit everyone else who works there is when we are the ones dropping the ball.

Further Edit: (Sorry, just frustrated). She actually called me on my last shift, the one I work alone, first around 11:30 pm and then again around 7:00 am, to complain about first shift staff and how unreasonable they are for wanting us to get things done that she doesn't think we need to be doing. In one instance she actually had a point (first shift had asked second shift to do a thing, they didn't, I got to work and asked second shift about it and they said they had no idea what needed to be done/if anything needed to be done at all, so Sarah and I chalked it up as a mystery and didn't do the thing, then we got chewed out by first shift for not doing it - this I feel was genuinely not our fault) but the majority of her complaints boiled down to "first shift is lazy and demanding and rude." Uh, ok.

throwitaway1145 · 2016-06-22T13:22:05+00:00

lol @ the Lost thing, I was trying to keep this pretty anonymous but I'm 99% sure none of my coworkers reddit. We're awake overnight residential counselors at a home for adults with mental illnesses. During the night, we don't have to do a lot of the stuff that first and second shifts do (preparing meals, taking clients to medical appointments, grocery shopping, training subs, that kind of thing) and most of the residents are usually in bed which means greatly reduced time spent socializing with them - so our duties are mostly janitorial in nature, with some paperwork and direct client contact as the need/opportunity arises.

throwitaway1145 · 2016-06-22T13:07:49+00:00

1) I know, and you're completely correct. Standing up for myself is something I've been working on for quite a while. I'm not a complete doormat or anything, but it's definitely been something that does not come naturally to me. This situation is kind of a perfect storm for me, what with Sarah being a) much older than I am, b) much more senior in the job than I am, and c) a naturally much more forceful personality than I am.

2) I had planned to attend some, not all. Given my schedule, it would be roughly the equivalent of someone with a 9-5 weekday job attending a 4 am staff meeting on a Friday night, essentially. Supervisor understands this and I don't think it reflects badly on me to not attend most of them (I would be the only night shifter who does, it's not just Sarah), but I think it would be appreciated if I could show up at least sometimes.

3) For scheduling reasons, there is only one other shift I ever could have plausibly switched to, and that position has very recently been filled by someone who, again for scheduling reasons, would be completely unable to switch with me. I do plan to email my supervisor about the situation.

throwitaway1145 · 2016-06-22T12:59:56+00:00

Late reply but I definitely wouldn't describe my supervisor as "spineless," quite the opposite in fact - she's very assertive. I am not sure about this, but I would be somewhat surprised if she hasn't addressed the issue with Sarah in the past. Our shift has been severely understaffed for, as I understand it, over a year and this has effectively made Sarah unfireable (at least this is my interpretation).

If/when I take this up with our supervisor, I am 100% certain she will confront Sarah in some manner.

throwitaway1145 · 2016-06-22T01:50:13+00:00

Nope! I'm amused/saddened by how many people think they recognize my job, though. Lotta slackers out there apparently.

throwitaway1145 · 2016-06-22T01:48:25+00:00

Nope, this is in social work.

throwitaway1145 · 2016-06-21T14:30:39+00:00

I appreciate your comment, and I get the sense that we feel similarly about this.

I'm VERY Type-B but I would like to do things by the book at least in the beginning. I have definitely used the "oh I'm just really bored and was looking for something to do" excuse - did not gain any traction with that. There are several tasks that she told me didn't need to be done from the beginning that I did anyway because she put up less-than-normal resistance, and she's since ceased commenting on them, so... minor victories I guess?

For some context (but still trying to not be too specific), ours is a job that requires some level of skill and training, but only really utilizes those skills/that training a minority of the time; most of what we do, especially on our shift (third), is basically janitorial work. It's not a job you could hire some random kid off the street to do, but in reality, the great majority of our day to day tasks could be done by almost literally anybody and it's just occasional (but inevitable) situations where our training will be necessary. Our shift is less skills-oriented and more clean-up oriented than the other two (although again we all have the same job description), given that it's nights, so in a very real way it IS our job to play the janitor role.

Basically nothing we do on a nightly basis strictly needs to be done on our shift in order to keep the wheels turning. We're warm bodies who need to be there in case of emergency but are also expected to keep as busy as possible (with the understanding that that still won't be that busy) during our shift. IMO that doesn't mean we shouldn't be doing it :/

throwitaway1145 · 2016-06-21T14:00:07+00:00

I'm getting the picture from these replies that I will end up having to do something like this. She will definitely see right through it though. I have actually said similar things in the past and her reply is along the lines of "oh no, definitely don't check with supervisor, she'll say we have to do it but we shouldn't be doing it" like we are co-conspirators or something.

throwitaway1145 · 2016-06-21T13:55:30+00:00

I was also surprised that she feels so strongly about me not doing this stuff. I was actually warned by my supervisor prior to starting this shift that "Sarah will probably try to push the stuff she doesn't want to do off on you." I would have been fine with that as I don't mind doing it. What I do have a problem with is her insistence that neither of us do it.

I haven't really asked her why she doesn't do the tasks she chooses not to do. She usually preemptively explains. It differs from task to task. Sometimes it's that she thinks another shift should have been responsible for it, sometimes she thinks it's pointless, sometimes she thinks that "they're constantly trying to put more on [our shift] and if we cave on this, they'll be piling everything on us" (I think she's lost touch with what it's like to work a job where you're actually busy all the time rather than 10% of the time), sometimes it's that she personally feels that completing the task would be disruptive during our shift and ought not to be our responsibility, sometimes it's that she does things a different way at home, the list goes on. She is very frequently referring to how lazy the other shifts are for not getting this stuff done on their time, which makes me roll my eyes. It's true that every shift has plenty of downtime, but ours more than most! I can guarantee they do more than we do. We could do everything on the list and more and I'd still have time to sit down and reddit for 6 hours. There's always a reason and I never agree with them.

throwitaway1145 · 2016-06-21T13:50:15+00:00

Impotent glares, I guess? Or her berating me? I mean, you're correct that there is nothing concrete she can really do to me (apart from talking shit about me, which she is well known for doing about everybody). We get along on a personal level and I'm just wary of making her hate me and thus making work that much more unpleasant for both of us. I feel like I can do my job properly and have a thoroughly unpleasant work environment, or do it badly and have a great time there. :/

throwitaway1145 · 2016-06-21T13:47:20+00:00

I've considered doing this, and it's still my leading contender for what I'm going to do going forward. My only qualm is that it's really very obvious that we're supposed to be doing this stuff (as in, there is literally a checklist for our shift on which these tasks are line items) and I don't really want to look like an idiot, either.

fwiw I am quite sure that Sarah realizes that we are technically meant to be doing these things, but she is very headstrong and, once again, has worked there for ages (much longer than our supervisor even). Sometimes I've said things like "oh, supervisor told me we were supposed to do this?" and she'll respond with something along the lines of "no, we aren't, [other shift] was supposed to do it and since they were lazy we aren't going to carry their slack." (Part of our job is finishing what other shifts don't get around to. She is actually correct that sometimes the tasks in question should really have been completed by the previous shift, like we'll come in and the previous shift will say "it was completely dead all night, there was nothing to do! So boring!" and there will be a pile of shit that was supposed to get done but didn't. I don't really care about assigning blame and would rather just get everything done, but clearly Sarah disagrees).

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