Toilet Trouble

of shorter questions from people. The first question today, well, I'm just going to say that when I first started asking Manager eleven years ago, I never expected to get so many questions involving office toilet etiquette. Hi, Allison, I work in a small office of about three five people, and we have an interesting situation here that none of the leadership is quite sure how to contend with. So we decided to ask you. Someone or perhaps multiple people

are not flushing the toilet. I know staff are reporting with some regularity and no pun intended, that they're finding toilets filled with shall we say, large deposits and are growth out. How do you advise. I addressed this with my staff. I've been a manager for more than twenty years, and it's a first for me. Okay, the first thing I need to say here is that I get a lot of letters from people whose offices are in the same situation, which has really surprised me, because who knew

that this was so common. I've even encountered it in real life. I once worked in an office where this was happening. We called whoever was doing it the phantom pooper, and it suddenly stopped after one particular guy was fired. So either he was the phantom pooper or someone else was and realized that they could frame him by choosing

that particular time top. I want to say that second option is too pathological to explain it, But on the other hand, the behavior itself is already kind of pathological, so who knows. I also have a relative who reported it was happening in his office too, and like I said, I get a bunch of letters about it, So apparently there is a weird epidemic of aggressive non flushing in offices. As for an answer, I don't have a great answer

for this. I don't know that anyone does. I mean Obviously, you can try putting up signs asking people to flush, but people generally already know that they're supposed to flush. It's not like a sign is going to teach someone that rule for the first time. Maybe if it's just happening because someone is incredibly absent minded. But I'm skeptical

that this is about being absent minded. I mean, flushing is a key part of the activity that you're in there to do, so I think it's more deliberate than that, and that it often can be a kind of active aggression. It's you know, it's no coincidence that the guy who least seem to be responsible in my office with someone who eventually got fired for unrelated reasons. It's not the kind of thing that you think your star performer is doing.

You know, it feels more like an f you. And if that is the case, signs aren't going to help and might even egg the person on. But you can try signs who knows, try putting up some friendly signs asking people to remember to flesh and see what happens. It probably won't solve it, but it'll take minimal effort to try that out. But assuming that doesn't solve it. At that point, you don't have a lot of options if you really want to get serious about it. There

is one thing that can potentially work. It's kind of a pain, though. You can put a lock on the bathroom door and start requiring people to get the key from your receptionist in order to get in there. That's actually not an uncommon set up. Lots of offices do have bathrooms that work that way. But if yours isn't already set up like that, it can feel like a lot of effort and change just to get someone to

flush the toilet. But that is a way to potentially stop it, because if someone walks in there and find something gross, it's much easier to know who was last in there if people have to get a key every time, So there's this sort of specter of accountability and that might stop it. But again, I mean, that's a lot of effort to go through for this. The other thing though, and this is a fairly meta way to address it, but you could think about your staff and who's thriving

there and who's not. You know, do you have someone who's struggling with their work, or who seems unhappy, or just any unresolved personnel issues. And I am not saying you should then go to them and accuse them of doing this, Absolutely not. The idea is that if you do have unresolved staff issues, you might take this as

an incentive to really tackle those. And I know that sounds totally unrelated, but like I was saying before, this isn't something that your star performer generally does, and really you should be resolving any existing staff issues anyway. But it's human nature to let things linger, and lots of employers,

lots of managers, do let things linger. It is possible that by deciding we're going to do a sort of organizational health check up and start working to fix anything that isn't in good shape, it is possible that in doing that you will find that this problem goes away too. And that might seem like an awfully big picture reaction to something that seems very small. But what I'm saying is that this poop might be like the canary in a coal mine, you know, a sign that not all

is well, the poop in the coal mine. If you will or not, I mean, maybe you have a tremendously absent minded person on your staff who knows but it's always a good idea to do that kind of organizational health check anyway, and there are all kinds of other good things that could result from it, so it wouldn't be wasted effort. That's probably way more than you've expected me to read into poop in the toilet, But there you have it. Okay, let's go to our next question. Hi, Allison,

my name is Riah. I love your podcast and love hearing your helpful suggestions to people at their workplace. I have a question for you that's been a recurring topic of debate among me and my friends. What is your opinion on using personality tests to hire personally? I kind of think they're like horoscopes. I think people sort of read into them and pick what they want to hear and ignore what they don't want to hear. I could give you another hundred reasons why I don't like them,

but I'm really interested in hearing your take. Thank you for your time, and I really look forward to many more episodes in hiring specifically, I'm not a fan of personality tests. Frankly, I'm not a fan of using them with existing employees either, but that is more just about

my personal preference. I know that a lot of people have found things like strength Finder or the Disk assessment to be really helpful and giving insights into their own strengths and their approach to work, and forgetting insight into those same things for their coworkers, and just figuring out how to communicate with each other better. Some people do really find value in that, But using it with an existing team is one thing. Using it as part of

your hiring process is a lot more problematic. There are employers who have people take personality tests early on in their hiring process, and then they just automatically reject people who don't score a certain way. That puts way too much weight on the results of the tests. And actually several of the big personality tests, like the Myers Briggs specifically say that they should not be used in hiring. There's a couple of big problems with doing in hiring. One.

There are loads of problems with most of these tests scientific validity. It's one thing if you want to use a non scientifically valid test with existing employees because you think it helps people learn to communicate better with each other or whatever it might be. But it's a really different thing to use them to make decisions about who

you will and won't employ. Another problem is that you're forcing people to take what is essentially a psychological test as part of your hiring process, and people are entitled to some psychological privacy. It's not really reasonable for an employer to require that a potential employee open up to them so completely. It's kind of gross, you know, to scrutinize every aspect of a candidate's life in that way. And then the other thing is it's just not good hiring.

People with different personality types can excel at the same job for different reasons, and it's not smart to decide that you know who will be good at what based on the results of a personality test when you have much more relevant information right in front of you in the form of their work history and their accomplishments. It's a little like if we were going to hire based on i Q. Intelligence is great, but what you really want to know is what has the person used their

intelligence for? What if they achieved And it's the same thing with personality tests. You want to look at what they have actually gotten done, and that is a much more reliable measure of what you can expect from them if you hire them. Let's take a short break here and come back with a lot more questions. Welcome back. Oh okay, next question. Hi Allison. I work for a small media company and we're constantly battling to stay staffed properly.

Clients will send us large projects with a tight deadline, and so we'll staff up to meet the demand, but then the client will inevitably delay and force us to let people go since we can't always sustain a higher staff when the money isn't coming in as quickly as expected. UM, my question for you is what's the best way that we can let people go without killing morale or treating them unfairly. We're a small group, so we tend to become pretty good friends, and it's hard to watch good

people get cut simply because of financials. Sometimes we're cutting three or to five people, which is a pretty big blow when our total staff hovers around twenty people. In the past, my boss has pulled staff members who are getting cut into a conference room while somebody else hit send on an email to the remaining staff letting them know what's going on the and while those on the chopping block are being let go, their workstations are locked down,

and they gather their belongings and leave. The reaction is basically chaos from the moment people start reading the email until they say goodbye, and everybody grumbles about how shady it is to fire people this way and how uncompassionate it is. I'm torn myself because I'm not sure what other way we could possibly do it. So what are your thoughts? What's a graceful way for a small company to make big cuts like this? I know we'll never make everybodey happy, but surely there's got to be a

better way out there. This is so hard. There isn't really a great way to do layoffs. They always suck and they're always hard. The way that your company is doing it is actually pretty typical. It's very common for companies to have laid off employees leave immediately, in part because they want the staff who remain to be able to adjust to this new normal as quickly as possible. And it can be hard on everyone to have laid

off employees sticking around. Hard on the people being laid off, of course, but also hard on their coworkers, who can feel kind of guilty and awkward, and it can prevent the company from being able to move forward and recover. I suspect with your staff who are complaining, it's feeling very abrupt. You know, one moment they have these coworkers who have they've grown close to, and the next minute

people are gone. So one thing that you might do is talk to your staff about why you do it this way and how it can be difficult for someone to be told that they're being laid off but then still be expected to stick around and be productive. But there are two other things that I would also do. One is to make sure that you're treating your laid

off employees as well as you can. You know, make sure that you're giving them generous severance, pay for their health insurance as long as you can, and even help with job hunting leads if you can. If you're remaining employees see that you're doing those things, it's going to help. They want to see that you're treating people well, So the more that you can demonstrate that you are, the better.

The other thing, though, is that it sounds from your letter like this is not an uncommon thing to have to do, and if you are regularly needing to lay people off because you're staffing up for a new project, and then the client delays or doesn't come through, you might need to change the way that you're handling that staffing.

You might be better off going with contract workers or temporary workers where it's explicit from the beginning that this could happen, rather than hiring people as longer term employees when the reality is that you know from past experience that you might not be able to keep them on. You don't want to hire someone away from a good full time job to come work for you and then end up laying them off a few months later. That's pretty awful to do to someone. If there's any way

that you can foresee it. Sometimes you can't foresee it, of course, but it sounds like in this case that's happened enough that you know going in that it's possible. And in that case, at a minimum, you've got to be open and transparent about it with people so that they can make good decisions for themselves and not get

blindsided by it later. But it would be even better if you could change the home model that you're using to hire for those projects so that it is explicitly structured as a shorter term contract to begin with, maybe with higher pay to compensate for the uncertainty that's built into the timeline. That would be the right thing to do for them, and I suspect the rest of your staff would feel a lot better about it if they knew that that's how it was being handled. Okay, next letter.

So I quit my job at Company A that I really like back in December and have been working at a new place closer to home since then. I regretted quitting almost immediately. I left my previous job at Company A for a few reasons. Tensions with the bullying manager, go pay, and chronically overworked employees, to name a few. I decided to quit and come to Company B for those reasons. I heard lots of good things about Company

B and did enjoy it for a while. The work is easier, I combided to the office, and my schedule is flexible. However, I find my unchallenged and disengaged a Company B. The people here are less dynamic and of a different cohort than myself, and the work is much less interesting. I missed the hard work and the people at Company A. I reached out to Company A about three months after starting my new job to open the door to coming back, and had what I thought was

a positive meeting with my previous manager. I also talked to several of my colleagues at Company A, and they were over the moon at the prospect of the returning. However, those meetings did not go anywhere, and I did not hear back from my former manager. I decided not to push it. I've thought about it for a while now and feel I made a mistake in leaving. How can I reopen the communication with Company A to express my desire to go back, or should I just take the

hint and look elsewhere? Would so appreciate hearing your thoughts on this. Thank you. There is a framework of thinking in your question that I hear from people a lot, which is that you're looking at this as a choice between A and B when you really should looking at see it sounds like you left Company A for really good reasons. A bullying manager and low pay and being chronically overworked are things you want to get away from, not things that you want to knowingly go back to.

Aside from the low pay, which of course you do know about going in, those are the sorts of conditions that people tend to discover after taking a job and hate and wish that they had known about beforehand, because they would not have signed on if they had. You have the advantage here of already knowing what it's like there, and it sounds like you made a smart decision to leave. I think your second guessing it now because company BE turned out not to be the right match for you.

But that doesn't mean that you should go back to company A. I would actually take the fact that your conversations with them about returning didn't go anywhere as a blessing in disguise, and instead focus your energy and finding a better match somewhere else. I will say that when you do that, be careful that you don't jump at the first offer that you get, which is easy to do when you're in a bad situation and you want

to get out of it. But because you have not been at the current job that company be very long, I think close to a year. You want to make sure that wherever you go next you can happily stay for at least a few years so that your resume doesn't start looking job poppery. You're totally fine with this one shortish stay. You just don't want to start racking up more of them because you don't want it to

look like a pattern. So just be really vigilant about screening the next employer and do due diligence to make sure that it's really what you want. I mean, of course, that's always a good idea to do anyway, just be really careful about it in this context. But yeah, don't go back to a job that sounds so problematic just to get away from the current one. That would be like going back to a bad X rather than dating new people. You've got lots of other options out there.

Let's go to a quick break and then I'll come right back with another question. Welcome back, Okay, here is our next question. Hi Allison. I'm a recent graduate working in a major metropolitan area. I put my all into work, but I often like to plan for things after hours, like networking events, alumni meetings, or dinner with friends. I'm contract at nine to five, just like my colleagues with the same title. My new supervisor often keeps me late

without notice. I almost always let him know when I have conflicts after work, but he often emails me new assignments right before I'm about to leave. He has told me my relatively frequent requests to leave on time, not early, are quote unquote inconvenient. I now think he's distracted by these requests so much that it hinders him from seeing my efforts. I'm always early and often work through lunch

and complete overtime. I meet deadlines and expectations. None of my colleagues with the same title are held to these time standards and are instead given much more flexibility. How do I stand up for myself without crossing the line. My boss is the head manager and we don't have a human resources department. Thanks so much, well, that is annoying. It is true that jobs aren't always really nine to five.

In professional type jobs, it's not uncommon to need to stay late to work on something that comes up at the last minute, or to meet a deadline. It shouldn't be happening constantly, though, unless that's something that you were prepared for in the hiring process, or unless it's a

known condition of your field. But having it happen occasionally is not uncommon, but a good manager will work around it if you explain that you have existing plans, unless whatever the work is is truly crucial or unless whatever your existing plans are sound really really flexible. Like if if something fairly important comes up and you say, well, I was planning to go to the gym, that's not

going to look great. But you know, if you have a commitment to someone else and something comes up that isn't super time sensitive, a good manager would not push on that. I'm curious about two things. The first is how time sensitive is the work that he's giving you right as you're about to leave, and was there any way for it to be handled earlier in the day. In other words, is the way that he's doing this

really necessary or is there something else going on? And then my second thing that I'm wondering about is it's interesting that other people with your same title aren't having this happen. If they have different bosses than you, that

could definitely explain it. But if you all have the same boss, then it's weird and it makes me wonder what else might be going on, Like does he think that you're more competent and so he wants you to be the one to do the work, or are you getting stuck with it because you're the one who doesn't have kids and therefore you don't need to leave for daycare pickup but everyone else does, or something unfair like that. In any case, I think the best thing to do here is to talk to him about it head on.

Sit down with him and say something like, I wanted to talk to you about my hours. I've gotten the sense that you don't want me making plans in the evening in case last minute work comes up, and I wanted to clarify what is expected of me. My understanding when I was hired was that their role is mostly although I understand that of course occasionally I might need to stay late. I wouldn't want you to have the

sense that I'm not putting in the time. I'm always early, and I often work through lunch and work over time hours, and I never missed deadlines. But of course I also do sometimes have commitments outside of work, and I can change those when something is really urgent. But I have the sense that you have wanted me to be available in the evenings more often than I have been. I don't want to guess what your expectations are, so I

was hoping we could talk about it. When you say that tone really matters, you want to sound kind of the tone I was just using like it's it's sort of you're trying to not be defensive or argumentative or saying that you absolutely have to do it your way, but you're trying to get a better understanding of what the situation is and what he's looking for, and then

see what he says. But if he tells you that, yes, you will frequently need to work later than you have been, it would be reasonable to say, can I ask you more about that? I've noticed that other people in this job do regularly leave in time, and I'm wondering is there's something about my particular role that makes it different. I'm not trying to argue with you. I just want to understand so that we're on the same page going forward.

And who knows, he might actually have an explanation here that makes sense, like maybe you deal with a different type of client than other people do and your clients have more time sensitive work or who knows what. But if not, then depending on how the conversation has gone overall, you could possibly say something like, UM, I really appreciate you talking with me about this. Is there a way to make this work where I am still able to

have evening commitments? I, of course can work around them when there is an emergency, but I'm hoping that you'll factor in that I am coming in early and working through lunch and doing excellent work, and I'm hoping my schedule can be more similar to the other analysts or whatever your job title is. Hopefully that will lead to

a useful conversation. But if you come away from this having been told, yeah, this is just how it is and you just need to deal with it, then at that point you know, Okay, this is part of the deal with this job, at least for as long as he is your manager. And at that point you have to decide what do you want to do within those parameters. And that could mean you decide you're going to suck it up. It could mean you decide you're going to

look for a job with different hours. It could mean that you just keep doing what you've been doing, which is pushing back and letting him know when you have other plans on a day that he wants you to stay later. But a lot of this depends on the type of work that you're doing and the culture of your office, because there are offices where it would be totally fine to push back like this, and there are others where you might come across as not understanding the

nature of the work. I don't know from here which yours is, although it is really interesting that other people in your same job don't have the same expectations, and I think one of the most useful paths here might be finding out why. That is. One last thing about this. You had said that your contracted nine to five. I have been assuming when you said that you don't actually mean that you have an actual signed contract limiting your

work to those hours. I am assuming that because most people in the US don't have contracts in that sense. They have offer letters, they have employee handbooks and hiring paperwork, but it's unusual to see actual employment contracts except for very high level executives in most fields. Now, if I'm wrong about that, and you do have a contract that explicitly limits your work hours, you'd point to that contract.

But I'm assuming this is a more typical situation where your hours were just laid out in an offer letter or in a handbook, which isn't binding in the same way, and where your employer can say, hey, I need you to stay late tonight, Well, that is our show for today. If you would like to hear your question answered on a future episode, you can record it on the show voicemail by calling eight five four two six work. That's

eight five five to six nine six seven five. Or if you have a longer question, a question where you actually want to come on the show and talk with me, email it to podcast at ask a manager dot org. That's it for today and I'll be back next time with more questions. M