Hi Queen of all things HR,
My boss has his own secretary but uses me as his personal filing cabinet. While I am more than happy to store and file information as best I can, I truly resent being used this way.
Please advise.
Not Thilla-ed With the Manila (Files)
*
Dear Champ,
I worked at Blockbuster Video in the early 90s when VHS tapes weighed 98 pounds. Very often, customers would attempt to hand me a tape as I walked around the store. They would shove a tape into my arms and say, “I don’t want this one.”
I would let it fall to the ground and respond, “Okay.”
The lesson?
- I’m not paid to respond to rude people.
I set personal boundaries for myself, and I recommend you do the same.
- Your boss may hand you a stack of folders, but he’ll never do it again if you plop those files back onto his desk.
- Or if you refuse to extend your arms and accept the folders in the first place — and paper documents fall to the floor as you walk away.
- Or if you accidentally misplace those files in the garbage bin — and then suggest he send his secretary on a pointless, all-day manhunt to find the lost folders when he needs the information for an important meeting.
- Of if he tells you to remind him about an important event and you forget.
I could go on like this for hours.
It reminds me of the time when a VP of Human Resources asked me to get him coffee before a meeting, and I happened to return with a cup of decaf that was 38% sugar. Or when a supervisor suggested that I attend a team meeting that had nothing to do with me and I interrupted her in the middle of a sentence and asked, “Will you excuse me?”
I never returned to her office, and I never attended that meeting.
It’s boundaries, baby. Protect them.
Love,
Laurie
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
punk rock pr prophet: you fly like a butterfly and sting like a bee.
love
col
I AM THE GREATEST. I AM THE GREATEST.
- I’m talking about you, cols.
My #1 pet peeve is when bosses ask their employees to do something that they could have done themselves in the time it took to ask the employee to do it. That is the ultimate backasswards way to assert one’s “power” as a boss. Ugh!
Your advice is from someone of normal social behaviour, not the modern HR professionals that I know amd loathe. It will only lead to “Not Thilla-ed” being rated as “does not meet expectations” at his/her next performance review by their obviously arrogant, socially-defective pig of a manager, and then marked down as a future downsizee.
No, the currently accepted industry approach at large companies (certainly within the big pharma industry) is surely that NT should file a grievance for bullying and/or sexual harrassment against their boss. Hoards of HR professionals will then be all over it and the boss will soon be history. Happens all the time.
Of course, NT could avoid the snarky behaviour altogether and just say “hey, can you please do your own damn filing, or ask that secretary of yours to try “working” some time?” But such behaviour is frowned upon these days in the workplace…
hrWench – Wait, I think you hate bosses. Plain & simple.
Pharma Giles – Agreed with your approach in big pharma and HR departments, except I didn’t want to do that kind of work at PFE. That’s what made me so special in HR. I had internet shopping to do.
I actively encouraged retaliatory, passive-aggressive behaviours. Believe me, it works. Subtle but important messages are sent — without lawyers, no less! Also, it saves me a load of paperwork and frees up my schedule. No meetings! No reports! No complaints! No lawyers!
More importantly – more Laurie time!
I just can’t imagine you at PFE, somehow. No way…
I rocked PFE from Sandwich to Manhattan & all the way to La Jolla.
Just catching up on the Punk Rock HR questions and this made me totally snort because…
My boss used to have me fill up his parking meter, until I kept “forgetting” and he had $300 in parking tickets. oops.
What a shame about your boss… was he fined for being a horrible leader, too????