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agonyaunt2019-06-24 05:08 pm
minoanmiss) wrote in agonyaunt2019-06-24 05:08 pm
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Ask A Manager: Our Boss's Wife Camps Out In Our Office For Hours at a Time
A reader writes:
I work for an accounting firm with about 40 employees. I’ve been there for about nine months now and generally enjoy it. However, the culture has been a bit difficult for me to adjust to. We sometimes have clients visit for meetings and because there is limited space at the office and it’s always busy, we have a system to make sure the meeting rooms are always available when needed.
Some of the time this works. However, the director’s wife (who works for a completely different company) has a habit of regularly turning up to either hang out and chat or actually work from our office. Jane turns up unannounced with a laptop and camps out in one of the meeting rooms doing work for whatever company she works for, which makes things very difficult for us. The director is sometimes busy for hours until he realizes Jane is there and presumably resolves whatever reason she had for coming in.
Our PA tried talking to her once, but Jane doesn’t make much/any effort to communicate with staff (bar one of the accountants who she knows) and just brushed her off. Her attitude appears to be that she married the boss so she can do whatever she likes. Jane also doesn’t seem to like two of my younger female colleagues and has started coming in even more since they joined. One of them is incredibly uncomfortable when Jane turns up, as she will make a point of staring at her.
Aside from the awkwardness of having the director’s spouse camping out in the office for hours on end, it disrupts our work. Normally, we will fit any internal meetings around scheduled client meetings, but when she is there we can’t. We’ve also had a couple of times where a client turned up and the receptionist was confused as the booked room wasn’t available.
What would you advise we do in this situation? I’ve never worked in a company where family members used the office like that. They would sometimes attend big social events (awards, etc.) and maybe if a well known colleague’s wife had a baby she might visit briefly. But otherwise family and work was always separated. I would never turn up like that at my uncle’s company, despite it being a huge office.
Yeah, that’s disruptive and weird. Showing up occasionally — not a big deal. Sometimes waiting for him to be done with meetings or whatever — fine. But regularly showing up and staying for hours on end, in other people’s space? No. And if she’s showing up more now because young women have started working there, that’s a real problem.
The easiest part of this to tackle is the availability of your conference rooms. When Jane goes into one of your conference rooms, someone needs to say, “Oh, that room is booked for a meeting and isn’t available.” Or, if the room isn’t needed right away, you can say, “Just to let you know, we’re going to need that room at (time), but you’re welcome to stay in there until then.” And then when it’s time for your meeting, you go to the door and say, “Sorry to kick you out — we’re about to use this room for a meeting.”
You say it cheerfully, but firmly and matter-of-factly — as if there’s no question that of course she’ll vacate the room (because any reasonable person would).
It’s possible that this is all it will take to solve the conference room problem. If no one has been speaking up when the rooms are needed, Jane legitimately could have no idea she’s causing a problem, and simply explaining you need the space will likely resolve it.
But let’s say she refuses to vacate the space when told you need it. In some ways that might be a blessing, because it gives you a very easy thing to take to your director. In that case, you’d talk to him and say this: “We’re running into a problem where Jane comes in and sets up in one of the conference rooms when we need them for meetings. We’ve explained to her that the rooms are booked and needed for meetings, and we’ve asked her to move when we need the space, but she’s refused. A couple of times she’s bumped us out of the space when we needed it for client meetings. How would you like us to handle this?”
Even once you solve the conference room problem, though, you still have the problem of her showing up and making people uncomfortable. You might not be able to get her to stop hanging out entirely (unless you can tie it to a work issue, like if there are confidentiality restrictions that are hard to abide by with a non-employee around so frequently). But if she’s staring down employees and making people uncomfortable, that’s something you can raise. Whoever there is most senior and/or has the most capital with your boss should speak to him and deliver that message. There’s no getting around the fact that it’s an awkward message to deliver, but the best way to do it is to just be very matter-of-fact: “Jane frequently stays in the office for a few hours at a time while she’s waiting to talk to you. Since Cecily and Lucinda started, she’s been here more often, and she stares at Cecily in a way that anyone in Cecily’s shoes would be uncomfortable with. None of us have the standing to talk with her about it, so we’re hoping you can intervene.”
And really, in many situations that person would also be able to say, “It’s tough to have Jane here so often for so many hours. She’s making the staff uncomfortable and no one feels they can say anything, but if you can tell her not to camp out here, people would appreciate that.” You can’t say that to every boss, but if the director isn’t an ogre, it’s a reasonable thing to try.
I work for an accounting firm with about 40 employees. I’ve been there for about nine months now and generally enjoy it. However, the culture has been a bit difficult for me to adjust to. We sometimes have clients visit for meetings and because there is limited space at the office and it’s always busy, we have a system to make sure the meeting rooms are always available when needed.
Some of the time this works. However, the director’s wife (who works for a completely different company) has a habit of regularly turning up to either hang out and chat or actually work from our office. Jane turns up unannounced with a laptop and camps out in one of the meeting rooms doing work for whatever company she works for, which makes things very difficult for us. The director is sometimes busy for hours until he realizes Jane is there and presumably resolves whatever reason she had for coming in.
Our PA tried talking to her once, but Jane doesn’t make much/any effort to communicate with staff (bar one of the accountants who she knows) and just brushed her off. Her attitude appears to be that she married the boss so she can do whatever she likes. Jane also doesn’t seem to like two of my younger female colleagues and has started coming in even more since they joined. One of them is incredibly uncomfortable when Jane turns up, as she will make a point of staring at her.
Aside from the awkwardness of having the director’s spouse camping out in the office for hours on end, it disrupts our work. Normally, we will fit any internal meetings around scheduled client meetings, but when she is there we can’t. We’ve also had a couple of times where a client turned up and the receptionist was confused as the booked room wasn’t available.
What would you advise we do in this situation? I’ve never worked in a company where family members used the office like that. They would sometimes attend big social events (awards, etc.) and maybe if a well known colleague’s wife had a baby she might visit briefly. But otherwise family and work was always separated. I would never turn up like that at my uncle’s company, despite it being a huge office.
Yeah, that’s disruptive and weird. Showing up occasionally — not a big deal. Sometimes waiting for him to be done with meetings or whatever — fine. But regularly showing up and staying for hours on end, in other people’s space? No. And if she’s showing up more now because young women have started working there, that’s a real problem.
The easiest part of this to tackle is the availability of your conference rooms. When Jane goes into one of your conference rooms, someone needs to say, “Oh, that room is booked for a meeting and isn’t available.” Or, if the room isn’t needed right away, you can say, “Just to let you know, we’re going to need that room at (time), but you’re welcome to stay in there until then.” And then when it’s time for your meeting, you go to the door and say, “Sorry to kick you out — we’re about to use this room for a meeting.”
You say it cheerfully, but firmly and matter-of-factly — as if there’s no question that of course she’ll vacate the room (because any reasonable person would).
It’s possible that this is all it will take to solve the conference room problem. If no one has been speaking up when the rooms are needed, Jane legitimately could have no idea she’s causing a problem, and simply explaining you need the space will likely resolve it.
But let’s say she refuses to vacate the space when told you need it. In some ways that might be a blessing, because it gives you a very easy thing to take to your director. In that case, you’d talk to him and say this: “We’re running into a problem where Jane comes in and sets up in one of the conference rooms when we need them for meetings. We’ve explained to her that the rooms are booked and needed for meetings, and we’ve asked her to move when we need the space, but she’s refused. A couple of times she’s bumped us out of the space when we needed it for client meetings. How would you like us to handle this?”
Even once you solve the conference room problem, though, you still have the problem of her showing up and making people uncomfortable. You might not be able to get her to stop hanging out entirely (unless you can tie it to a work issue, like if there are confidentiality restrictions that are hard to abide by with a non-employee around so frequently). But if she’s staring down employees and making people uncomfortable, that’s something you can raise. Whoever there is most senior and/or has the most capital with your boss should speak to him and deliver that message. There’s no getting around the fact that it’s an awkward message to deliver, but the best way to do it is to just be very matter-of-fact: “Jane frequently stays in the office for a few hours at a time while she’s waiting to talk to you. Since Cecily and Lucinda started, she’s been here more often, and she stares at Cecily in a way that anyone in Cecily’s shoes would be uncomfortable with. None of us have the standing to talk with her about it, so we’re hoping you can intervene.”
And really, in many situations that person would also be able to say, “It’s tough to have Jane here so often for so many hours. She’s making the staff uncomfortable and no one feels they can say anything, but if you can tell her not to camp out here, people would appreciate that.” You can’t say that to every boss, but if the director isn’t an ogre, it’s a reasonable thing to try.