It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.
There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.
Remember the letter-writer whose employee was making off-color jokes? Here’s the update.
Thanks for publishing my letter. I had my review meeting with Fergus a few days after it was published and used a script very similar to the one you described. I also approached it in a fairly low-key way rather than thinking of it as disciplining. As I expected, he was very receptive to the feedback, and as soon as I brought it up, he knew what I was talking about. I explained that there was always a chance someone might overhear something like that and not realise it’s a joke, but also that more simply it just reflected badly on him, which I didn’t want for him. I also acknowledged that Martin was the one to make the first joke about drug references, but that Martin isn’t generally someone to emulate anyway.
Fergus took it all on board and wasn’t resistant to the feedback at all. We talked about how joking around at work isn’t the same as joking around with your friends, even in a fairly casual atmosphere like our office. He did briefly bring up the idea that being close to the line was part of the joke, but I made it clear that at work that line is much further back. He agreed and said he’d be more careful with his jokes and comments in the future.
And he has been! There was once incident where someone brought a delivery to his desk and there was some brief joking around the idea that it might be sex toys or something, I piped up with a “guys…”, Fergus clocked it immediately and said “sorry!” and that was that (and the worst of the joking had come from the other staff member, anyway).
The comments on the original post were really helpful, especially from some people who had been on the other end of feedback like this and how it opened their eyes a bit. A few people felt that I should have been calling Martin up on his joke as well, and not singling out Fergus. However I don’t manage Martin and really wouldn’t have the standing to bring it up with him – my organization has a pretty flat structure and Martin and I are about equal in the hierarchy. Plus he’s much older than Fergus and has been in the workforce significantly longer (and been at my company about a year longer than me), and he is NOT the type to take feedback on the taste level of his humour particularly well. So he can keep making whatever impression he wants, I’m not going to make that one my problem!
