Short Case Study - Boss piling on work with late notice on the weekend
Hey everyone,
My GF is a nursing teacher. Her boss (Kamala) is constantly giving extra work to the reliable teachers and no credit when she uses them to cover for the unreliable staff. They used to employ casual staff as backup but Kamala stopped that.
Last week GF was given an extra night session as cover. Then on Saturday Kamala texted asking her to cover a Monday session as well. Extra work on top of extra work and she needs to prep on her weekend with no warning. Kamala emailed as well saying that she would be doing the session. No mention of her doing a favour helping out the team.
Problem is teachers often call in sick for Monday and if GF doesn't little bit fight Kamala will keep dropping extra work on her over the weekend with no notice.
Here's the draft email I wrote for her:
Hi Kamala
It was nice chatting on text yesterday, happy to help out the team and cover for Karen on Monday. It is not easy for managers with late staff changes
If you could help me by taking me out of the other extra session I was given for Acute on Tuesday that would be great.
Reason is so I can finish my WHS stuff and get them out to the teachers in time and prepare the first diabetes for next day. Also Tuesday is Chinese New year which is like Xmas day for us.
By the way I’ve prepped for Monday for 2 hours today. I’ll batch it up and maybe we can have chat about some TOIL leave at some point.
See you tomorrow if you are coming to campus.
I tried to apply what I've learnt here:
- Sandwich the content between some normal social niceties and show some empathy.
- Keep it short
- Keep it light
- Give a reason for the request to be removed from the other session.
- Follow the manager's direction. This bit: "..get them out to the teachers in time.." Kamala always wants the other teachers to have 7 days to look at new lesson material
- Power protect - "maybe we can" any manager knows Time Off In Lieu is an HR thing - no need to rub her nose in it.
Anything you guys can think of to improve before we send it?
Hmm ...maybe this one was a bit too basic to be worth discussing. Anyway the wrap is Kamala asked another teacher to cover the Tuesday session so it was effective. Then my g/f offered to run a drop in session for both campuses (promise of future value) which makes Kamala look good to the managers at the other campus.
Nah, I don't think it was basic, I think it's a difficult situation as most situations with poor leadership/bosses are.
Obviously it was effective so props to you, but even independently of how it went, it seems well written and thought out.
Just a really small thing I write to give a valuable feedback more than because it was important is this:
Quote from Transitioned on January 30, 2022, 6:44 amAlso Tuesday is Chinese New year which is like Xmas day for us.
Think of that from her perspective.
And from an ingroup / outgroup perspective.
And now I think you already got to the point:
It self-frames as "other" and "different".
And people prefer to engage, help, support... And even more, promote people who are more like them.
Got it. Thanks I was trying to add some strength to the request. But that's not power protecting and yea I fell right into the 'not one of us trap' doh!