haunted hotel on a work trip, my intern is terrible, and more

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. I don’t want to stay in a haunted hotel on a work trip

I’m a junior employee at a smaller firm (100-200 employees). I travel about once a month for work and typically stay in generic hotels. I’m heading to a small town on my next trip and the project manager suggested we stay at a cute old historic property. Not a problem, I go to book, and it says the hotel has a friendly ghost.

I am absolutely petrified of ghosts and paranormal things — think years and years of weekly therapy. The two people I’m traveling with are more senior than I am, and I’m a little embarrassed to say, “Hey, I know you’ve stayed here before but actually I will be an absolutely terrified mess throughout the entire trip.” Thoughts on how to approach this?

Just own it and be matter-of-fact and breezy about it (even though that’s probably the last way you’re feeling): “I’m really freaked out by places that say they’re haunted and I saw the hotel advertises that way. Could we stay somewhere else? Or would you mind if I did?” That should be all it takes! But if they blow off your concerns, then you could say, “I know it’s not rational, but I want to make sure I can focus during this trip so I’m going to make a separate booking somewhere else for me.”

2. How do I tell interviewers I’m looking for a quieter work environment?

I am looking to move on from my current job, because I can no longer tolerate the noise level of my working environment. I work in an open plan lab with a number of people who all want music playing or have no preference. This used to come from a small radio in to corner of the lab, which was annoying but tolerable, but now it is a speaker box design that also connects to people’s phones and can be loud enough to make conversation difficult, depending on who last set it and their taste in music.

I find this incredibly distracting and very unpleasant. I have no problem with sound caused by normal activities or conversation, but I can’t cope with this. I am trying to set up and run complex analysis where a moment’s inattention can ruin days of work (and trigger weeks of investigations) while unable to hear myself think because I have music I would never choose to listen to continually intruding on my thoughts. I seem to have no ability to shut this out and I am making an above average number of errors because of this. This has lead to me being put on a PIP focused on reducing my number of errors, which I would consider fair except that no effort is being made to mitigate the cause of the problem.

Conversations with my manager have gone nowhere. She believes it is something the lab workers should sort out ourselves, and my coworkers seem to be operating on majority rules. If the radio is off, it is not long before someone switches it back on. There is nothing quite like having thrash metal suddenly switched on at full volume when you are pouring out measures of neat sulphuric acid. Earbuds or noise-cancelling gear are banned due to health and safety requirements that we be able to hear alarms, I can’t work anywhere but the lab most of the day, and I was recently restricted in the number of breaks I can take. I finish almost every day stressed out, exhausted, and paranoid about the errors I may have made, which makes relaxing and recovering at home much harder than it should be. The rare exceptions when I have a quiet day, I finish my tasks early with far fewer errors and walk out of work feeling relaxed and confident instead of dreading the next day.

I am now trying to search for a job where this will not be an issue, but I am having difficulty with motivation, partly because of the exhaustion but mainly because there is no way to guarantee I will not encounter the same problem in a new job. I am also concerned that prospective employers will not consider this a good reason for moving on and may regard me as potentially unreliable or not a team player because of this. Are there any good ways to discuss this at interview or answer the question “why are you leaving your current job?” that will let me weed out similar situations without hurting my application with other employers? I just want to work in a lab and not a disco.

First, it’s ridiculous that your manager won’t do anything about this when your work is suffering from it. Is there any way you can escalate the situation, either over her head or to HR? The company’s interest should be in work getting done correctly and people being able to work comfortably, not in prioritizing music above that. It’s true that some people work better with music, but I doubt the effect on them of removing the music would equal the effect on you of leaving it on.

But as for job-searching, you don’t need to get into this at all. Focus on what interests you about the job you’re applying for, not what’s driving you to leave the current one. The exception to this is if you haven’t been there long enough for that to work (like if you’ve only been there six months and so you’d look flaky for wanting to leave so fast with no explanation), in which case you could say, “Kind of a weird issue, but the lab is really loud — there’s a loud radio playing all day long and I’ve found it’s hard to focus.” That’s not going to make you look unreliable.

3. My intern is terrible and my manager won’t do anything

I work in a technology for education company and my job involves data analysis, customer support, and project strategies. I am not in the U.S., if it’s relevant. Because we’ve had many new projects thrown on us, we hired two interns to help with daily activities. One of these interns, Peter, took some time to get used to the routine, but now he’s great and we trust him fully. He’s also leaving by the end of this week, which is why I’m so worried. The other intern, who I’ll call Jane, is much younger and very immature.

Jane thinks it’s more important to be fast than to be correct. She thinks that if she can do all her tasks in two hours, she’ll have two more hours to do nothing, since she works four hours a day, four days a week. She also does customer support, but she’s terrible at it. She’ll give wrong answers to our customers and not think about it. She’s rude when a client calls and doesn’t say the right things either. She often just doesn’t do what she’s supposed to do and leaves her work to me or Peter. She asks basic questions about our projects that she’s supposed to know, given she’s been with us for almost a year now. Last week, she asked me if she could share a spreadsheet we use that contains all students’ information with one student because he asked for the certificate of his course. The spreadsheet doesn’t even have certificates in it! When I try to talk to her about these things, she just doesn’t respond.

I’ve taken this to our manager and our project manager a million times, but every time they talk to her she says things are great and she’s happy to be learning. Except she’s not learning anything! It’s driving me and my other colleagues crazy. Is there something else I can do while my manager evaluates the situation? I feel like half the time I’m working I’m just fixing her mistakes and I’m close to burning out due to how exhausted I am.

You need to say clearly to your manager that the issue isn’t whether Jane feels things are great and is happy to be learning; it’s that she’s rude to customers, gives them wrong info, doesn’t complete her work, and isn’t responsive to feedback, and you’re spending hours fixing her mistakes. If you’ve already said that clearly … well, then your manager is actually the bigger problem than Jane and is wildly inept! You can try saying it again, spelling it out very, very clearly and emphasizing the impact on you.

But if that doesn’t work, are you able to just not pick up Jane’s slack? Right now, because you’re doing all the work of fixing Jane’s messes, your manager isn’t feeling the pain of the situation the way you are. Try dropping your end of that rope and see if that makes the situation feel more urgent for your boss. (And yes, it can be painful to do that if you’re a conscientious person! But it doesn’t make sense to care about fixing these problems more than your boss does, and letting him see the issues more clearly might be the only thing that will make this better.)

4. I dropped my badge in the toilet

I just dropped my badge in the toilet. I have been on back-to-back calls and ran to the bathroom before my next one, heard a fling-clink right as I sat down and … well, nature called before I could get it, if you catch my drift.

WHAT DO I SAY WHEN REQUESTING A NEW ONE? There is no amount of cleaning that is going to make me be able to wear it again.

“I accidentally dropped my badge in the toilet.”

You don’t need to explain anything further than that. The details here are entertaining for us but unnecessary for your office.

5. How long should it take for HR to fix a payroll mistake?

I just realized that job I’ve been on unpaid leave of absence from for the past few months has continued to pay me via direct deposit this whole time. I should have realized sooner, especially since HR kept doing / asking / sending me weird things (they initially refused to confirm my past employment for my employer during the leave and seemed to think that doing so would make me lose something, they’ve sent me updates on raises which they should only do for people currently on payroll, etc.) and HR has a history of screwing up, but I didn’t, so now I’m left holding the bag and needing to fix this mess.

Thanks to your column, I know I owe them this money back (five figures). I’d rather pay it in one lump sum to get this fixed as quickly as possible, and thankfully I do have it liquid, so I have made sure the same account they were direct depositing to has enough money for them to claw it back without overdrafting. I asked them for an estimate of when they will do so, when they will fix my assorted withholding (such as state tax, federal tax, and union dues), and an estimate of when they will send my corrected W2.

Is there anything else I need to be doing or asking them for? How long is this likely to take a competent HR department, and how long for an incompetent HR? It’d be nice to have a check on whatever they say.

You have all the correct questions covered. You should expect them to fix it by the next payroll, two payrolls at most. If it takes longer than that (particularly since you need a corrected W2 to file your taxes next month), you should escalate it. (To be clear, if they owed you money, they should fix it by the next payroll, period.)

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