A reader writes:
One of our staff, Leonard, runs to work. Given our local climate, this often results in him arriving damp and/or cold, which has caused issues:
• Our offices/meeting rooms have glass walls, so he uses the shared washroom to change on arrival – tromping through in muddy shoes or bare feet, washing his pants in the sink, and dripping water down the hall. On one occasion he dropped soggy underpants beside a female coworker. He immediately apologized and has shown no other signs of being creepy, but she was Not Pleased.
• He runs a space heater constantly. He’s not the only one, but he’s the most blatant, to the point that our workplace occupational safety committee has threatened to do a formal inspection of our offices (which they’ve traditionally looked the other way on). If they did, that would result in confiscation of not only the space heater but other not-exactly-approved appliances like personal tea kettles. Alison, there would be riots.
• When we have morning in-person meetings, he’s visibly shivering within a few minutes of starting. He never complains or tries to get out of meetings, but he looks so uncomfortable that others have (privately) requested meeting online or later instead.
The thing is, we have an on-site gym, with lockers, showers, even a sauna. However, it is not free – and not cheap! – for staff, so most (including Leonard) have not purchased memberships. I feel like all of these issues would be solved if he just bought one, but I also don’t think any of these issues are severe enough that we can compel him to spend his own money on gym access (and unfortunately the cost is unlikely to change anytime soon). Your thoughts?
Yeah, you shouldn’t push him to buy a gym membership, but you should lay out clearer expectations about what he can and can’t do in the office.
It’s reasonable to say that he can’t leave a mess of mud or water in the bathroom or the halls, and you can flag for him that people have privately asked to reschedule meetings because his visible shivering makes them feel like they’re imposing on him.
The space heater is a little different. If other people also run space heaters in violation of the office rules, you can’t really tell him that he can’t. But you could come up with specific modifications he needs to make — like if other people are only getting away with it because they’re using them rarely whereas he’s running his full-blast all day, you can tell him he needs to pull his usage back. In fact, since he’s presumably running it because he’s cold, you could fold that in the conversation about shivering.
Here’s framing that would cover it all: “I need you to figure out a better solutions for mornings when you arrive wet or cold from running to work. Fairly often you’ve come in with muddy shoes or bare feet and washed off in the bathroom sink, which leads to mud and/or water on the floors in the bathroom and the hallways. Can you find a solution that doesn’t leave that sort of mess for others? … I also want to figure out what we can do about your temperature when you arrive very cold since a few people have privately asked me to reschedule morning meetings because they feel awful that you’re shivering. Unfortunately, running a space heater all day isn’t a solution — we’re not supposed to have them at all, and while the facilities team has been looking the other way, they will eventually remove them for everyone if they realize you’re running one so frequently.” (Writing this out makes me realize I might actually leave the shivering out of it — both because people are allowed to be visibly cold and because it’s likely to be solved by addressing the other issues anyway.)
If he seems stumped about what to do, you could mention that the on-site gym could be a solution — but at the same time, be aware that it might not be realistic financially and/or he may not want a gym membership, which is a whole different thing than running outside and also doesn’t solve his commute. But ultimately your job isn’t to solve this for him; you just need to lay out the pieces that need to change (mostly, no mess in the bathroom and halls) and let him decide how he’ll do that.
