It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. Unauthorized visitor won’t leave our cafe
I work for a university research department, and we have run into an issue with a stranger repeatedly remaining in our office cafe/kitchen space, and it is proving surprisingly difficult to resolve.
The building we are in houses many departments that don’t work with undergrads, but do work with graduate students, faculty, and other affiliates and guests. The building is not owned by the university, and building management is across the street in a different building. The building is unlocked 8-5 Monday-Friday but requires fob access at all other times. All of the office suites require fobs to get in, but the cafe and bathrooms are outside of locked areas, and the cafe is an open area without a door, so there’s no way to prevent people from entering that space once in the building.
Since early November, we’ve had an issue with a youngish man appearing in the cafe some days. He has a computer and will get lunch and return, so initially we assumed he was a grad student. When he ignored requests to stop watching videos out loud in the space (he would stop for a minute or so, then go back to his prior behavior), we started to get suspicious. I tried to politely ask who he worked with here or what other building department he works for, or even just his name, and he evaded the questions, by speaking quietly, repeatedly claiming he’d already told me, and mumbling the requested information in sentences that were otherwise clear and understandable. As a guy under five feet tall, intimidating authority is just about the last thing I’ll ever be described as, so I quickly hit a wall.
My supervisor and several other staff members at various times also asked him for information and to be respectful of the space and or to leave, but no one got any further, though it never escalated in a hostile or loud way either. We reached out to building management and they said they’d send security, but that never happened.
We’ve continued to spot him sporadically and heard reports from other groups of him pulling similar behavior, and always naming a department not on that floor as the one he worked for. Building management did speak to him at one point, and he claimed to work for us. Building management is nice but often slow to respond to messages, so we cannot easily summon them every time we see him.
Grad students have also reported seeing him around over the weekend sometimes, when they’ve been in to work on things. This past weekend, my supervisor, otherwise on parental leave, stopped by to get something and spotted him but chose not to engage since she had her kids with her.
We are a bunch of social scientists and well aware of not wanting to come off as profiling a Black man for being in a space, but at this point it is an issue. Practically, the biggest problem is that in the time it takes to go get management or someone else for help, he’s able to slip away or leave until the next time we spot him, and engaging with him is just going in circles, never getting enough information to get further, or to even verify if he belong in the building. It’s not clear if he’s even disruptive in a way that would justify calling the police. What should we do?
Do you have to do anything? It doesn’t sound like he’s causing problems, other than sitting in a cafe. I’m not suggesting you should completely ignore your security rules, which presumably exist for a reason, but you’ve tried to address it and gotten nowhere, and it doesn’t sound like you’re in a position where you absolutely must take additional action. Is it an option to just let your building management know the whole history — including the fact that at least once he lied about who he works for, as well as that he’s been there on weekends when the building was locked — and then leave it in their court to decide what to do?
If he’s being disruptive or refusing direct requests (like to stop playing videos out loud), you can call campus security, but otherwise this seems like an issue for the building management rather than any of you. If you feel they’re not handling it with an appropriate level of urgency, the next step is to be clearer with them about exactly why it needs more urgency; right now they’re probably proceeding as if it’s a minor issue because it’s not clear that it requires more than that.
2. Should I have corrected my coworker’s very funny Spanish mistake?
I have an extremely low-stakes but very funny question for you. My team consists of five monolingual English speakers, though a couple of us know some words or phrases in other languages, including myself and my coworker, “Mary.”
Mary likes to throw around the few Spanish phrases she knows for flavor, and usually uses them correctly, but today she goofed quite badly. In Spanish, “happy new year” translates to “feliz año nuevo” (note the tilde over the “n”). Mary, however, wished another coworker “feliz ano nuevo” (no tilde) in our team’s group chat. This translates to “happy new anus.”
I said nothing. I laughed myself to tears in my home office, but I didn’t correct Mary. I figured everyone would know what she meant, and correcting her would be unduly embarrassing. Was that the right thing to do? Is there a way to bring something like that up without embarrassing someone?
Do you have a warm relationship with Mary? Is she someone with a sense of humor who can laugh at herself? If so, I can think of no greater gift than letting her know she wished your coworker a happy new anus, and I don’t think you need to tiptoe around it at all.
If Mary is not someone who can laugh at herself … well, in that case I might have even more desire to tell her what she said, but from an office politics perspective it may be wiser to just leave it alone.
3. My coworkers won’t stop singing
This is probably not a problem that can really be solved, but it’s driving me insane and maybe you have some insight I’m not thinking of.
I have two coworkers who wander in and out of my work area frequently throughout the day who are constantly singing. Both actual song lyrics, and wordless opera-style harmonising. I would find it annoying even if they were good singers, but I’m sorry to say that they’re not, which makes it even worse.
They drive me absolutely bonkers because I can’t stand noise while I’m trying to work. Because of where my desk is located, I can’t use headphones (I sit at the front desk despite receptionist duties not being part of my job description, which is a whole other letter).
Neither of them is the type of person I feel I could earnestly ask to stop. Asking them would almost certainly result in them a) arguing with me and/or b) singing even louder at me. Plus, I don’t want to be seen as the office grinch. Is there anything at all that I can do about this?
Someone singing in the hallways while other people were trying to focus was one of the earliest things I had to address as a new manager! It remains fascinating to me that some people don’t realize that’s not okay to do in an area where other people are trying to concentrate on work.
In a normal situation you could simply say, “Hey, it’s hard to focus when you’re singing in this space! Sorry to ask, but could you not sing when you’re walking through here?” But since you think these coworkers would argue with you about it (WTF?) or just sing more loudly (also WTF?), your only other option is explain to a manager that it’s disrupting your work and ask them to intervene. Most managers are likely to ask if you’ve tried speaking to the coworkers yourself first, so you should preemptively explain why you think doing that will escalate things. (And for what it’s worth, any manager should be pretty alarmed to hear that one of their employees would fight someone over a request like this, but the fact that this dynamic exists in your workplace in the first place makes me wonder if that will actually be the case or not.)
Related:
my employee is a terrible singer
4. Best way to phrase an unusual dietary requirement
I have recently been diagnosed with a medical condition that requires me to avoid fatty foods. As in, my body has issues digesting these foods, so I should not eat them. At home, it’s not really an inconvenience — while the diagnosis is new, I have had these issues since birth, so I have always avoided certain foods such as cream, mayo, etc. as I knew they made me sick. However, it is a much bigger problem when eating out and at work events as I am not sure how to communicate my dietary needs. (I find even dishes that would be completely fine if I cooked them at home with minimal olive oil are often made with a lot of butter or other fat in commercial settings.)
In the past, I just tried to make do, but now that I have a diagnosis, I would like to be able to ask for food that meets my medical needs like anyone else and not be sick after work dinners. I have tried just asking for “low-fat” but as a petite woman, it has led to some inappropriate comments suggesting I “should not be trying to lose weight” or even that I have an eating disorder! What wording would you recommend? Am I better off giving a list of specific ingredients (“no mayo, cream, butter, or full-fat dairy” which are the main culprits in my experience)? Or just get the vegan option, which allows me to avoid most of these, even if it’s likely to miss instances where, say, the cook just uses a lot of oil? Is there a better way to phrase it?
Give the list of specific ingredients, since not only is “low-fat” leading to some weird misunderstandings, but you also risk people defining “low-fat” differently than you do. It’s safer to simply say, “I have a medical condition that means I can’t digest mayo, cream, butter, or full-fat dairy.”
5. Applying to follow an ex-manager to her new company
I’ve had a fantastic work relationship with my now-ex supervisor (let’s call her Xena) who recently left for a higher-ranking (but not senior leadership) job at another organization in the same field. Xena gave me a hint about an opening in her new department, a position where I’d be reporting to her again — which I’d like very much.
Do you have any advice about deploying a recommendation from a colleague who’s brand-new at the organization I’d be applying to? If I’m asked why I want to apply for the job, would it be a bad move to mention wanting to work with Xena as one of my leading motivations? How much weight is the organization likely to give to her recommendation in the first-round sorting of applications?
Her recommendation is likely to carry a great deal of weight as the hiring manager. But don’t frame wanting to work for her again as one of your leading motivations. Mention it, yes, but you don’t want to sound like it’s the primary driver of your interest — since if they see that, they’re likely to immediately start worrying about what will happen if Xena leaves later this year. Focus on other reasons the job appeals to you, and keep the mention of Xena as more of an aside.
