How do I get her to back off?
BY ALISON GREEN for Inc.
A reader asks:
I work at a small company, almost completely from home. I go into the office about twice a month, and for the most part, it’s been a dream. I am vastly more productive and have found that my mental health has improved drastically.
Since the transition, I have done everything I can think of to set clear expectations as far as when I am available. I have specific, set hours when colleagues can expect me to be at my desk. I use away messages to say if I’m up from my desk for a quick break to stretch my legs, use the bathroom, etc. (with a time I’ll be back). I also always have my cell on me in case it’s a (rare) emergency. I do most of my communication with clients and our team via email, but I do have a VOIP phone that dials out with the main office number, and I can be interoffice paged via this phone as well.
Almost the whole team is great with this arrangement, with one exception: our main admin, Kate, who cannot seem to respect these boundaries. She’ll page me outside of my work hours, or regardless of whether I have an away message set, and if I don’t get to my phone fast enough, she’ll call my cell — usually for a very simple question that could have waited or been an email. If I point out that I set an away message, she’ll say, “Sorry, I didn’t see it.” I have told her I’ll be unavailable for an hour, and she’ll agree pleasantly, and then turn around and call me 15 minutes later, followed by the usual call to my cell if I don’t pick up. I will also often come back to see that she’s IM’d me in an effort to get my attention as well. When I ask why, she will say, “Well, I didn’t think it was a big deal since you’re already there!” When I say I’m busy, Karen says, “Oh, I knowwww, we all are,” and continues with her behavior.
What can I do differently to enforce these boundaries? I have stopped running to the phone if I’ve communicated that I’m away, but that doesn’t stop the inevitable tide of calls and texts to my cell, and sometimes she’ll just call and call until I get sick of hearing it and answer, even though I’m taking a break. I pride myself on being just as available now as if I were in the main office, but at this point, I’m being forced into being much more “available” at home than I ever was when I worked in that building.
Green responds:
It sounds like you’ve tried addressing this with Kate on a case-by-case basis, but haven’t had a bigger-picture conversation with her about it, so that’s what I’d try next. The next time you’re in the office, sit down with her and say something like this: “We need to change the system you’re using for reaching me when I’m working from home. You’ve been calling me outside my work hours for things that aren’t urgent, like X or Y. And if I don’t immediately answer, you’ll often call my cell, even though it’s not urgent. I need to be able to focus on other projects and to eat lunch or stop working at the end of the day without being chased down by so many calls. When something is not urgent, I need you to wait for me to get back to you, rather than trying to track me down in the moment when I may be dealing with something else. Can we agree that except in the rare cases where something is truly urgent, you’ll email me and wait for me to get back to you rather than expecting an instant response?”
(Alternately, instead of waiting until the next time you’re in the office, you could just call her the next time this happens and say it then, which might have the benefit of conveying, “I am at the end of my rope with this and we need to talk about it now.”)
If she balks at this, then say, “It’s affecting my ability to focus on other work, and it’s interfering with my off hours as well. I do need you to agree to this system going forward.”
If she says anything that sounds like no, you should say, “OK, let me talk with (Kate’s manager) about this and see what we can figure out.”
And Kate’s manager should indeed be your next stop unless this conversation fixes the problem entirely — because what she’s doing is incredibly disruptive and rude (and also weird).
If that doesn’t work, then you’ll need to move to solutions that change the type of access Karen has to you. Set her calls to your cell to go straight to voicemail. Mute her texts and IMs, so they’re there when you look for them but not annoying you with alerts popping up. Frankly, you could even tell her that you’re doing this! As in, “I’ve asked you not to bombard with me calls and texts for non-urgent items, but since it’s still happening, I’m going to mute your texts and calls for a while so that I’m not being constantly interrupted. I will still see them and get back to you, but they won’t be constantly popping up when I’m in the middle of something else. If there’s something that comes up that’s truly urgent and you can’t reach me, we can revisit this then, but so far none of these instances have been time-sensitive so I think this will work fine.”
