my “on-site” coworker is never on-site

[ResidentialBusiness]

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

For the past 18 months, the person in my office who holds the same job title as me has had serious attendance and communication problems. I’m not talking a few times a month. I’m talking it’s a miracle if he makes it in most of five days in a week. He’ll be in four times over two weeks. I’ve created a spreadsheet to keep track, this is not exaggerating.

Our job description is very specific that in office attendance is absolutely required of us at least three days a week. Our job title has the word “on-site” in it. I prefer to work in the office five days a week because home is a distraction-filled wasteland for me, and I wouldn’t have issues if he was coming in three times a week regularly. He isn’t, though. I was hired because it was too much work for him by himself, and I’m in the office by myself all the time.

He will sometimes inform me he isn’t coming in, but he just as often won’t and just doesn’t show up. He will often say he’ll be in later, only to change his mind and just not come in at all. I’ll get an apology lunch (if he bothers to show up) or text (if he doesn’t) the next day.

The problem is that I’ve done what I’m supposed to! I checked in with him first and made sure everything is okay. I asked what I could do to help him directly. When that didn’t work, in November of 2023 (and no, that’s not a typo), I first spoke with our supervisor on this. He is in a different part of the country so doesn’t have eyes on it directly. And I’ve brought it up regularly with this supervisor (in one-on-ones) ever since.

There have been discussions between boss and coworker. My coworker shows up for a week, maybe seven days, and then starts to fall off again. He knows what he’s doing is wrong because he keeps apologizing! There have always been excuses. Sometimes, it’s a funeral for a family member (which I can’t begrudge, though his family must be massive), but most of the time it’s a tummy ache or lack of sleep. While I would want leniency in those situations, the fact that my 2024 spreadsheet has 90 entries in it means he didn’t show up a third of the year.

What makes this harder is when he’s in, we work great together! We have very similar approaches to our job and can knock out all kinds of work extremely quickly. But I’m alone most of the time. And I’m afraid to take time off because I’ve come back with stuff I’d asked him to address while I was out completely ignored.

Our supervisor has suggested a meeting with the three of us, but what is this conversation going to do that the individual ones have not? Going up another tier feels like throwing two people under the bus. My boss’s boss is further removed, and finding time to discuss with him is next to impossible. But I’m being taken advantage of! I don’t know what to do. This is easily the best job I’ve had outside of this and I’m so upset that I’m here. How on earth do I proceed?

There are two issues here: (1) it’s aggravating that your coworker is flagrantly ignoring expectations he keeps agreeing to follow, and (2) you’re afraid to take time off because he won’t do the things he’s supposed to do during that time. #1 is really between your coworker and your manager; it’s aggravating but it’s also not yours to address (and you really should stop tracking his in-office days in that spreadsheet because it’s not your job to do that and that’s just going to keep you more mired in the aggravation). But #2 is very much your business, and so are any other ways that his not being there and his lack of communication affect your work. That’s where you need to focus.

From now on when you raise it with your boss, keep your focus 100% on how this impacts your work. Your boss clearly doesn’t care as much as you do about the rest of it, so take the parts that are causing concrete problems for you and dump those in her lap. For example: “I haven’t been using PTO because in the past when I’ve come back, Cecil hasn’t covered the things he’s agreed to cover and it has resulted in ___. But I do need to take time off. Can you help me with this?”

That might mean that you need to be okay with things falling through the cracks while you’re gone — and alerting your boss to those things when you return, and not cleaning them up yourself (or if that’s unrealistic, telling your boss other priorities will need to wait so you can clean up the mess Fergus made).

But also, it’s been over a year since you started raising this problem, and it’s time to accept your boss doesn’t care as much about it as you do. You’re approaching it as if she will start managing Fergus better if only you can convince her that she needs to … but for whatever reason, she doesn’t share your take on the situation. Maybe that’s because she’s a bad manager (likely), or maybe it’s because there are things going on behind the scenes that you don’t know about, or who knows what. Regardless, you’re going to be a lot happier if you accept that this is how things are and that you’re not in a position to change them, and shift your focus solely to pieces that directly affect you and let the rest go … most especially the spreadsheet.

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