Time to clean house when janitor refuses to clean – nepotism causes problems when poor performance allowed to continue

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Dear Joan:

One of our salesmen got his wife a job here as a janitor. She has complete flexibility and comes and goes as she pleases. We do not know day to day when she will be here or not.  She has turned into everyone's "helper" which can be nice.  The problem is no cleaning is getting done because she doesn't like to clean. 

She would rather stuff envelopes, run parts around, sit and read a magazine while answering the phone etc….Many of us have complained about how dirty the place is getting.  Because our market is slow right now, we do not need her to be our "helper" very much. 

We have time to do our own work, and since the place is so dirty, we figure she has plenty to do.  It still is not getting done, she just leaves earlier. When I approached the office manager regarding the dirty offices, she replied that the salesman made her get the job, and that she really doesn't want to work. And she also said, maybe we should hire a cleaning service since she doesn't like to clean.

As I said, the market is down and times are tight, so why should we hire someone to do the job she was hired for?  We all have aspects of our jobs that we do not like but must do.  If I want my desk dusted or floor scrubbed I do it myself.  She has told me, “Scrubbing floors is over-rated”.  Our previous janitor did floors twice a week.  My floor hasn’t been done in six months.

Because I have time, should I do the tasks she helped me with, to try to "free her up" to do her job?  Should I clean my own office and try to lead by example?  Neither has worked well, so I am looking for your opinion. 

When times are busy we need her to help, otherwise she should be doing what she was hired to do --- clean!  If her boss allows this I guess it is none of my business.  I have never seen someone waste so much time walking around, "visiting," and trying to look busy avoiding what they were hired to do.

Answer:

The office manager is right—she should fire her and hire a cleaning service. If this woman doesn’t like to clean, she has no business holding this job—I don’t care who her husband is. She isn’t performing her duties and is an unnecessary expense. The money would be better spent on someone who really can do the job.

When business picks up, she might be useful as a part-time temporary employee. She can come in during busy times and stuff envelopes and answer phones—but at the

pace the company requires—she can’t waste time and visit with other employees, or sit around reading magazines.

If she stays on the payroll and continues to do nothing, morale will start to dip. You and your co-workers will be justified in feeling that she is having a negative impact on the bottom line, since you have to do her job, and she is still paid.

The salesman has put the company in an awkward position. If he has any sense, he will take his domestic situation outside the company.

Here is a noteworthy comment from a reader:

“Today I received the e-mail with your recent article of the week on workplace anger. At the end of the article, it says, The world would be such a better place if we all simply said out loud, "It hurt my feelings when you." Oh well, I can dream.

I appreciate that sentiment. I would like to take it one step further and say it would be even better if people could say "When you did such-and-such, I felt hurt. That way we don’t make the other person's actions responsible for our feelings. Sometimes a person feels hurt even though what the other person did was not hurtful. 

Many times I have seen a situation where a person was hurting because they mistakenly take a comment or action personally. For example, when her co-workers scheduled the meeting on a day when she was going to be out of the office, Alice was feeling hurt because she thought they didn't want her at the meeting. In truth, they had no idea she was taking that day off and they had been looking forward to her involvement in the meeting. 

When we own our own feelings as being "ours" and not attribute them to another person's actions, we are claiming our personal responsibility and not putting the blame

or power or responsibility on the other person. An additional benefit of that is that the other person is a lot less likely to get defensive. People don't tend to get defensive if someone is feeling hurt unless there is an implication that it is our actions that are at fault and/or caused it.

It may sound like making a big deal out of a slight change in wording, but if you consider it closely, you will see that there actually is a big difference.”

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