How to handle a new manager?
January 31, 2010 12:46 AM   Subscribe

Asking for a friend: How to handle a new manager who's a perfectionist task-master?

A friend of mine works as a receptionist in a small health club. A few months ago, the owner hired Ms. Y to do the heavy cleaning tasks that were too much for the reception staff. Recently, Ms. Y has begun to take on more and more responsibility - delegating tasks, ordering supplies, overseeing repairs and monitoring the other employees. There has been no announcement that Ms. Y's role in the business has changed, but for all intents and purposes, she is now managing the club.

My friend describes Ms. Y as a zealous perfectionist who expects everyone else to work at the same speedy pace, with the same wild enthusiasm, as she does. Ms. Y has begun 'asking' my friend to do various tasks which my friend does not believe are part of her job description.

To complete the picture: Ms. Y is close friends with the club owner who hired her. She is also fairly young (mid-20s) with no management experience and, according to my friend, unreasonable expectations.

Being as objective as I can be, I believe that my friend is a good employee: she's honest, friendly and, knowing her, a hard worker. She's asking for advice as to how to deal with this situation without causing a major confrontation. I've told her to speak with the owner and Ms. Y together, to try to clear things up. Can anyone give her any other advice?
posted by Paris Elk to Work & Money (12 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
Hmm ... Ms Y moved herself from "cleaning lady" to "club manager" in just a few months. Maybe the "boss" who is also her friend has noticed how much is getting done with the micromanaging and "speedy pace."
I speak from experience when I say that. It can be discomfiting when a newcomer "takes over" but hey, maybe your friend the receptionist should squeeze out the mop once in awhile and clean up a mess or something, (with wild enthusiasm!) I have been taken down to size a couple of times by a "take-charge" type and frankly, they usually have some great ideas that are good for the business, even if they do stir things up.
Just sayin' ...
posted by bebrave! at 1:47 AM on January 31, 2010 [3 favorites]


Tell your friend to write down her specific concerns and questions before she meets with the boss and Ms Y. It'll be easier to get her questions answered if she knows clearly what they are.

If she has a contract, it might be worth her reading it to see whether it outlines what her job role is or not.

Finally, tell her to dust off her resume and start looking for another job. Nepotism tends to win out in situations like this.
posted by Solomon at 1:59 AM on January 31, 2010 [1 favorite]


It's hard without knowing the specifics of what Ms. Y is asking your friend to do to really provide good advice; if she's expecting unpaid overtime, an impossible level of perfection or the like, she's certainly unreasonable. If your friend's simply being asked to do more by a manager who wants to improve things, Ms. Y might not be so bad.

In situations where someone "jumped" the ladder on the way to management, there is a natural resistance to change. I would suggest to your friend to maybe delve deeper into whether or not she really thinks the manager is unreasonable or she's just miffed that she's not the one jumping up a notch.
posted by Hiker at 5:13 AM on January 31, 2010


Is Ms Y really asking your friend to do unreasonable things? If friend is being paid to be there and is being asked to do things during that time which she would consider to be outside her role there's nothing wrong with that as such. Most job descriptions I've ever had contain some kind of 'anything else that is reasonable' sentence in them...

If on the other hand she's being asked to do unpaid overtime or something that's another matter entirely.
posted by koahiatamadl at 5:56 AM on January 31, 2010


Your friend should talk to the owner (without Mrs. Y present) and say: "I have a question. Do I report to Mrs. Y now? Is she my boss?"

If the answer is no, then: "Oh, huh. It's just that she's been giving me an awful lot of orders. So I was a bit confused as to who was in charge."

Now, maybe the owner is buddies with Mrs. Y and/or doesn't care, and will basically say: "You are a peon, and should do whatever anyone tells you, at any time, for any reason." In which case, I would quit.

I'm horrified that there is actually more than one suggestion above to just roll with it and do what you're told. I guess your friend just has to just decide what kind of person she is. Personally, I do not tolerate the presence of people like Mrs. Y in my life. Having a domineering personality does not actually entitle someone to be domineering. I want to go to your friend's health club and dump a bucket of dirty water over her heard right now, and this isn't even my problem.

Sure, she might have to quit, but she can find another menial low-paying job in a more tolerable environment.

Talking to the owner and Mrs. Y at the same time is going to put the owner in an awkward position. The way he explains the situation to your friend will probably be different than the approach he will want to take in dealing with Mrs. Y. He should be given room to maneuver in that regard, for everyone's benefit.
posted by bingo at 7:42 AM on January 31, 2010 [4 favorites]


Note: I want to dump the dirty water on Mrs. Y, not your friend. I'm sure your friend is a very nice person.
posted by bingo at 7:44 AM on January 31, 2010 [1 favorite]


Yes - absolutely do not put everyone in the same room.

In real life, job descriptions and reporting lines don't always work like a textbook (except maybe in the Army...)

People who show initiative and get things done, especially if it involves organizing other people, end up getting promoted.

If your friend is being asked to do things outside her job description, that's a fair enough point to bring up with her boss. It would be beneficial, though, if your friend could also demonstrate that she is *busy* doing *her job*, as opposed to, say, watching TV, reading a book, or hanging out online waiting for the next person to walk in the door. If the job involves a lot of waiting, take the initiative and make the job a busier one.... add more to it.

Because, honestly, telling the boss that you don't want to do something someone's asked you to do , if you have nothing else to do, doesn't usually get very far.
posted by TravellingDen at 7:58 AM on January 31, 2010 [1 favorite]


People who show initiative and get things done, especially if it involves organizing other people, end up getting promoted.

This really depends on the situation. If fifty people all have the exact same job, and at the end of the day, the job has been done in half the allotted time, and one person is standing on a hill giving instructions that are being followed without question, then yes, that person will probably get promoted.

If two people have different jobs, and the hierarchy between them is unclear, and one starts bossing around the other, then most likely, either someone with no authority is acting like they wish they had some, or the boss is a bad manager who failed to clarify the situation, or doesn't want to clarify the situation, or all three.

I've had a number of jobs in which part of my job description was to stand up to domineering people who had a lot of power in general, but who did not have power over me specifically (funny that I should be the one chosen for such jobs, etc.). Hundreds of times, I have watched executives' eyes bug out of their sockets and steam come out their ears, as I told them frankly that I had no intention whatsoever of following their instructions, and that, what's more, they had no authority to give them. Later on, I would be praised by equally or more powerful people for doing my job properly.

Of course, not everybody is like me, and that sort of confrontation has to take place in the appropriate tone and context. I know that my attitude is a bit of an extreme. However, I'm disturbed by all the "maybe you should just do as you're told" that I'm seeing. If all it takes to beat you down is an aggressive janitor, then you're not setting a very good precedent for yourself in other aspects of life.
posted by bingo at 9:33 AM on January 31, 2010 [2 favorites]


Who was ordering supplies and overseeing repairs before Mrs. Y. got there? It looks as though there was a problem in how the club was run. It was dirty and in need of repair. Mrs. Y. came in and fixed that probably taking a lot of work off the owners shoulders.

Here's another way to read the question you wrote. I'm the owner of a small health club. The reception staff wouldn't do the basic upkeep. The place looked messy which hurt business. Also, the club needed some repairs. I hired a friend who has done a great job getting things fixed and keeping the place clean. She's also helped get the staff to do a more through job. I'd like to officially promote my friend to club operations manager, but the staff is angry about reporting to the former cleaning lady. How can get them to accept the change?

Unfortunately, your question doesn't include what these unreasonable expectations are. The only thing we have is that your friend thinks Mrs Y. is unreasonable.

The best option your friend has is to ask the club owner about the changes. However, if Mrs. Y. is improving his asset, then it's reasonable that the owner would be happy about the changes Mrs. Y. is making.
posted by 26.2 at 9:39 AM on January 31, 2010


I'm horrified that there is actually more than one suggestion above to just roll with it and do what you're told. I guess your friend just has to just decide what kind of person she is.....Having a domineering personality does not actually entitle someone to be domineering. I want to...dump a bucket of dirty water over her heard right now.....
Talking to the owner and Mrs. Y at the same time is going to put the owner in an awkward position. The way he explains the situation to your friend will probably be different than the approach he will want to take in dealing with Mrs. Y. He should be given room to maneuver in that regard, for everyone's benefit.


It's unlikely that Ms Y has gone from cleaning the place one day to ordering supplies etc. the next without somebody giving the ok as buying supplies leads to having to pay the bill so if she did that without the owner's approval he should have picked it up quickly...it looks as if Ms Y is acting with the owner's backing. The owner may not have formalised this and certainly has done a bad job communicating to the team but chances are he wants her to do these things.

So the best the friend can do is ask the owner to clarify the management structure and to work out if she wants to keep working there based on his answer. But unless Ms Y is really unreasonable in her requests the friend would do best to do as she's being told until she leaves.
posted by koahiatamadl at 10:11 AM on January 31, 2010


Ok, my answer is based on having worked in places like this:
It sounds to me like your friend works in the kind of place where everything is someone else's job. Where all the employees make the minimum possible effort. Where if the person who orders supplies quits or gets sick, everyone stands around and goes "huh. guess we won't get any supplies. bummer, man." Or when a receptionist is asked to take the trash out for a moment instead of surfing the internet for 4 hours straight, you get "uh, no? That's not MY job."

A cleaning lady doesn't get that kind of responsibility creep unless there's a total responsibility vacuum going on in the first place. That kind of situation is absolutely unacceptable to person who by nature is always looking for a way they can help, and doesn't mind taking charge to get shit done. It sounds to me like this is what is happening. Ms Y feels like certain things need to get done, and that they aren't going to do themselves. Also, she feels like she shouldn't have to run the whole damn club single handedly while everyone else gets paid to stand around and watch her, especially on cleaning lady pay. Likely she doesn't care who is in charge, but needs someone to be, FFS.

Complaining to your boss about someone like that is going to make you look like a jackass. Don't do it. The best you can reasonably do is ask your boss if maybe they need to hire another person to be club manager, because it seems like nobody is doing it? Other than that, your choices are to let her run the show and cooperate, take more responsibility for yourself to be busy doing useful things for the business on your own so she doesn't feel like the only one doing anything, or stepping up to take charge and run the show yourself so she can just be the cleaning lady like she's supposed to.

If my whole premise is wrong, then disregard. I've seen this situation time and time again, though (as the person who ends up taking charge, because nobody else will.)
posted by ctmf at 10:45 AM on January 31, 2010


Seconding the suggestion to ask the boss for clarification on the hierarchy/reporting structure. Do it in a professional and innocent sounding way without sounding like you have an ulterior motive.

The thing to keep in mind though is that the owner may quite well be fully aware and indeed responsible for this new lady acting the way she does. If that is the case, your friend should know that these additional responsibilities are likely going to become part of her job description and if she doesn't like it, she needs to consider how replaceable she is in her current role. If there would be 500 applicants the day after they posted a job and all would be willing to do her job + the additional tasks for her pay or less, she needs to decide whether she should just bite the bullet and do it or look for another job.
posted by Elminster24 at 12:15 PM on January 31, 2010


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