I have a coworker, Louis, who I’ve been fed up with since he’s joined our team.
Situation: Sometimes, not terribly often, Louis asks me questions that I know he’s already gotten the answer to via email. We’re part of a larger team, but mostly it’s just us on a joint client project. His usual process seems to be, “If I try something once and it doesn’t work, ask Jane (me), because she’ll find it more quickly.” If I mention it’s in an email somewhere, he’ll ask me what my problem is and would it really be that terrible to just quickly send it to him again/walk him through the process for a few minutes? And no, it wouldn’t, but the reason he’s asking me instead of looking it up himself is because it’s just easier on him (I’ve seen him do this to others and don’t believe it’s because of sexism).
Context: When Louis joined our team, he refused most of our attempts to teach him the ropes. He would cancel meetings that we’d set up, mostly because he’d rather start a bit later or didn’t see the need (his words), and told everybody in our company how easy our team has it (because others were shouldering the work — and yes, in hindsight, I should’ve told my manager that in no uncertain terms, but she’s very hands-off anyway). He learned most of the important stuff when he was alone at the project for a few weeks, with me at another location, and he absolutely had to. He still has questions sometimes, and I usually answer those, even if it’s been covered before. I have many more grievances that may absolutely cloud my judgment (i.e., he doesn’t care much about keeping our main client happy, he didn’t take me seriously at ALL during his first six months here, his actual work is … not good, he’s noticed that he doesn’t know all he should and keeps mentioning how little he was taught when he first joined the company(!)).
Question: How do I deal with his questions when he could find answers elsewhere (process documentation, emails)? I know there are more issues to address, and I need to push for him to take on more of our “shared” tasks, but I’m unsure how to reply to “why can’t you do this small thing, it would really help me” (said in a rather fascinated tone, like what possesses me to deny a simple request made by a fellow human?).
The words you want: “Sorry, I’m swamped right now.”
Obviously that shouldn’t be necessary; you shouldn’t need to defend your choice not to do his work for him. But since he pushes you on it and implies you’re a belligerent wastrel for not helping, just start responding to his requests with variations of, “Sorry, I’m swamped, but it’s definitely in an email somewhere.” And then if he asks what your problem is (!) or otherwise pushes back on that, you can simply ignore him. Or, if you want, say, “Like I said, I’m swamped and can’t stop what I’m doing.” Or if you have an expressive face and are willing to use it, feel free to give him a look that conveys, “Why are you asking me to stop in the middle of a busy day and do your work for you?”
Alternately, you could address it more head-on! As in, “It’s really weird that you act like I’m wronging you when I don’t take extra time to dig up old emails and resend them to you. You should assume you’re in charge of tracking those yourself and I’m not going to hunt them down for you.” But Louis sounds like such a jackwagon that I’m not sure it’s worth bothering, when you can instead just flatly decline in the moment.
#coworker #find #resend #emails #Manager
