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View Full Version : work update, canyou make an employee stop talking?



Zoe Girl
12-14-12, 11:25am
First good news. I had a series of difficult conversations with my supervisor. At the end of one we agreed that we really didn't understand the other person's point of vew. I kinda felt sorry for her then but honestly I was being fair and nice about how I approached it so that is the best I could do. If I had blown it off then we would have increasing tension and miscommunication. So she agreed at that point to re-read her emails between us and think about it. I had also gone up the chain of command casually. I was talking to the bigger boss about something else when some of this issue came up. The big boss and I are more similar in our styles which means we both have an attitude of 'we are all different, so how does this work' rather than a more heirarchy with emphasis on tight ship mentality. Now she is willing to learn more about parts of my job she said she really didn't need to know about and i thought she did. Very good progress.

Meanwhile I want to just make my one staff stop talking! That is usuallly where things start to go wrong. We got some feedback that our space needs to be left cleaner. No big deal, I got the details of what the facilities manager wants to see and went back to staff. Every school is different so this is normal to adjust and communicate. When i told staff and explained who it was she immediately said 'oh the one who looks like a thug'. I mean really, what do you say? I told her I would not describe him that way, he was K who had a brand new baby, etc. She said his pants hang low (not really) so I answered thsat my sons are lower, Basically I need a better answer. Something like ' you can have your opinion but that is not building a good relationship with the school'. And I need to track these comments, the other day it was talking about a kid and insubordination. I am not running the military here, kids do back talk. And we do not let them run the program but it just pushes my button. Guess we are ready for another difficult conversation there too, but I really want to just to lose my composure at this point.

Other than that, Family Game Night was awesome. We had a blast and ate every bit of pizza.

Simpler at Fifty
12-14-12, 12:04pm
Regarding the thug comment: Where I work our desk area and team meetings are safe zones. We can say what we want. Maybe you can establish a boundary like that. Sounds like this person just reacts very different than you would. I am talking about the Thug comment only. The other thing is did she touch a sore spot with you that she thinks people whose pants hang low are thugs and your son wears them that way and it hurt your feelings?

Glad there is progress with the Supervisor.

Zoe Girl
12-14-12, 6:23pm
That is an interesting idea, we work in a school so we watch ourselves a lot. Not a lot of wiggle room here. But maybe like with kids I can suggest she take some room for aminute.

It really isn't about the connection to my son, it is just in my opinion unprofessional to talk about someone we work closely with. And it seemed a way to dismiss that he needed us to clean our spaces a little different. I have very high standards in this area.

It ended up with a 'verbal' that i will do next week. Basically a documented conversation on this tone and respect issue. It is for how she interacted with me the other day and other staff commenting on how disrespectful it was.