[kfay]

So I'm the head anatomy TA (teaching assistant) at my school. One of my responsibilities is to collect questions that the other TAs have written every week, edit them, and then get them sent out to the underclassmen.

Most people get the questions in to me basically on time. Every week I have to chase around about 10 people to get me questions. I'm very nice about this.

So there's this one guy who hasn't turned in any questions for the past four weeks. this is a problem, it's part of his job description. I've sent him a few private emails, all very nice. Basically, "Hey man, I know the questions are piling up. Let's put you on a plan, get in a few extra questions every week, and we'll be cool."

No questions received. No response.

Finally, when I email this week's usual group of delinquents, I say in a separate line, "[Name], still waiting on your questions from weeks 5, 6, and 7. Seriously." I CC'd the head of the anatomy department, who runs the TA program, on this email.

I get an email back from him a few minutes later that's really indignant about how I called him out in front of everyone and explaining that his school email hasn't been working for the past month. And, he's sent me the questions every week but can't tell if his email is sending messages or not. He'll dig through his sent box tomorrow and get me the questions.

I obviously really regret tacking on the "seriously" at the end of what I said. Although I am fine with the rest of the email, I know this was really unprofessional. Having to chase around people every week to do their jobs and complain that they have so much to do, when I in fact have more to do than them, is really really annoying. But, assuming his email WAS broken, I was both a huge dick and really unprofessional. This is a big problem because I asked that anatomy professor to write me a letter of recommendation. Up to now, I'd think she'd write me a very good one. But also this isn't just a problem of having someone watching when you do something wrong, I don't want to be in these type of interactions in the future. I screwed up, obviously.

Anyway:

1. There's someone in at your work who isn't doing their job. You have to get them to do their job. What's the best way to do this?
2. You've asked this person now several times nicely to do their job. They don't. You can't fire them. How do you get them to do their job?
3. Person who you are overseeing tells you a fat lie to try to get out of trouble. You are nearly certain they've lied to you but have no chance of proving it. What do you do?

I bring up point 3 because what are the odds that out of the 25 TAs I oversee, all of who use the same email system, this is the one guy whose email doesn't work. Not only that, but finally when you send him something saying you mean business his email all of a sudden works. Anyway, like most students I'm positive he has multiple email accounts. Why not send me the questions from an email account that he knows is operational, rather than from one that is busted? On top of that, he needs until tomorrow to dig up these questions from his sent box.

[wyman]

KITN to both of you. You shouldn't have sent that out to the whole group.

1. You start with emails, then try to 1-on-1 converse with him, then you start cc'ing the boss or go have a talk with the boss.

2. Go talk to him. If you've already done this, go over his head to the boss.

3. Deal with it. Life's too short. You can document if you think it's likely to become a pattern.

[jjbrr]

i would take the email about his email being broken to your supervisor.

ETA: perhaps even add that you feel guilty about being unprofessional and the message, but that the situation as a whole is far worse.

[ggwhiz]

I don't mind one heads up e-mail copy to the boss but keep in mind (s)he couldn't care less about the details in the trenches.

I have no personal experience in such a setting but my stepdaughter had to deal with the broken e-mail excuse for a missing group assignment teaching at the U of Mainhe recently. She smiled sweetly, apologized profusely and told the perpetrator she had no choice but to give them trhe goose egg.

You apparently don't have the authority to impose penalties but that's a private conversation with the boss to see if you can get some. Don't hold your breath cause they are unlikely to give a crap and you are annoying for bugging them with it. When that fails, master the Canadian art of calling someone an a$$hole in such a way that they thank you when you are finished.

ie. How about a message to the group, so and so can't get a working e-mail running to submit this stuff. Can anyone help? Leaves the boss out of it and what do they dare say but thanks for the help.

No one in the group wants the same pay as this bird for more effort so that's the direction to focus on and I think you did that even without a cc to the boss. You might have found that opening with a little legwork and left the boss right out of it.

[CSGibson]

In dealing with someone at work here are my steps:

Talk to them individually

Talk to them with one other person present/one other person CC'd on the e-mail who also depends on their work (but ideally not their or my boss).

E-mail them your concerns to get a written record, but try not to be confrontational about it (something like I really need that ASAP, as we've discussed previously, rather than I've asked you 10 times, get off your butt and do it). CC their boss.

Talk directly to their boss, without the employee present, about your concerns. Ask whether there is a way to get this done without working with the guy.

[kenberg]

To start with, I fault the department. I am a prof and i would never put a TA in the situation you were in. I don't quite get exactly what you were to do, but it seems to me that your job should be to collect the questions that were given to you and to do with them whatever you were supposed to do with them. If someone is not giving you stuff on time, I would hope that wouold be quickly apparent to someone with more official status and then that someone would address it.

Now given the difficult situation you were in, I think an early conversation along the lines of "Look, buddy, I got to deliver this crap.. If you don't give it to me, I can't deliver it. So give it to me." Then, if you still do not get it, you turn what you have over and say you have made your best effort to get it, but it has not arrived.

It simply is not reasonable to expect you to find the magic way to get another grad student to do what he is expected to do.

[Phil]

Here's a possible flow chart:

1. Call them before any emails are sent. You aren't working at cross purposes so a friendly hi what's up didn't get this is appropriate. Formality breeds confrontation, although this is also a function of the organizations norms.

2 if this person is not responsive by phone send an email. The first email should almost be a joke like hey I've tried to call you a few times but haven't gotten a response maybe your cell got eaten by a shark or something. This approach is non accusative and allows the person to save face and come clean.

3. The next email needs to turn up the heat a little. The primary thing you want to confirm is to make sure they are getting the messages. If the don't respond I would take to the higher ups and give them the documentation. Tell the you aren't sure if this person is having computer or phone problems or they just aren't being responsive.

With someone you have a track record with you have to handle things differently than this.

[Zelandakh]

As others have said, the first thing is to make contact with the person. Email is a good start but if there is no response then direct contact is better. Where I differ from previous replies is that I think it is inappropriate for you to talk directly to the other person's boss. The proper chain of command here is for you to discuss the matter with your boss. If the other person's boss needs to be involved then it should usually be either via your boss or from their boss (different organisations have differing recommendations here). This ensures that everything is done properly and is also a good record should the matter get as far as disciplinary procedure.

Where the matter is now you have the opportunity to make it into a positive thing. For example, you could email your boss putting the other TA on CC to say that the matter of the missing questions has been explained as due to an email failure and would it be possible to put into practise a back-up mechanism (for all TAs) to make sure that the task can be completed even when there are system issues. In this way you both exonerate the other TA and (maybe) improve the department's procedures which might even help to make your job easier in the long-run. If you actually have an own idea for improving the procedure and it works then so much the better. This would almost certainly lead to a very positive reference from the Professor.

[gwnn]

Sorry but it sounds you walked into this one by never contacting him in person. You gave him a convenient excuse (blaming the email system) and he took it. Indeed, that his email would be defect in this particular way is very unlikely. But you can't prove otherwise. It is a very cynical strategy to blame the email system like he did but it is nevertheless done all the time and it seems to be widely acceptable. There is some sort of latent Luddism in all of us.

I don't think, though, that it is really bad to send a group message and including a reminder to one particular person. It is maybe tacky but not really rude. Whether it's an effective way of reminding people is another question (I think the answer is no).

[y66]

Sounds like you've already turned this annoying problem into a net plus for yourself by stepping back and thinking about the way you handled this.

Second Z's suggestion to work this through your boss rather than the other guy's boss.

For me, an interesting aspect of problems like this one is figuring out what the real problem is that I'm trying to solve and then figuring out what my winning options are. Expending energy on losing options sucks more than anything. That's another reason to discuss this with your boss. He can help you sort this out.

[rogerclee]

FWIW it's obvious he is lying and everyone knows it.

[lalldonn]

I think the following.

Your email was a little sarcastic but fine depending on the established culture, even in an office or academic environment. He brought it on himself.
It would have been solved with less mess if you attempted to contact him in person first.
Of course he is lying.
WTP, I'm sure your email worked and he will start being on time now.

[cherdano]

Relax. I imagine tomorrow you will get your questions, so you got the job done.

FWIW all the posts that suggest you should have talked to him don't match my sense of reality in academics.
(Now that's an oxymoron there!) You can't run after 25 people for what's supposed to be a side job of a few hours every week.

[Elianna]

cherdano, on 2012-July-06, 16:42, said:

Relax. I imagine tomorrow you will get your questions, so you got the job done.

FWIW all the posts that suggest you should have talked to him don't match my sense of reality in academics.
(Now that's an oxymoron there!) You can't run after 25 people for what's supposed to be a side job of a few hours every week.

That may be true in reality, but I think that it's not true in theory. What I mean is, I don't think that Kevin did anything wrong (although if I was his boss, I might offer to step in so that the situation doesn't become confrontational between two people who are basically colleagues) but that when he is on job interviews, he may want to have some of these answers of what to do hypothetically.

One of my questions I like asking on interview panels goes something like "Have you ever had to deal with conflict with a colleague and what did you do to get past it?" I look for people who show some signs of reflection about what happened, and think that Kevin would ace this, as he's looking for ideas of how to deal with such a person in the future.

I'm probably way too tired to be making sense, sorry.

[gwnn]

cherdano, on 2012-July-06, 16:42, said:

FWIW all the posts that suggest you should have talked to him don't match my sense of reality in academics.
(Now that's an oxymoron there!) You can't run after 25 people for what's supposed to be a side job of a few hours every week.

I agree and email is definitely the best first solution. However, it is my experience that if one ignores an email, they will ignore subsequent emails too. Luckily there were not 25 people in this case but only 1 who so contacting him in person (or maybe phone) would have been feasible.

[barmar]

Yeah, if all 25 TAs were insubordinate like this, the scope of the problem would be way above his pay grade.

[cherdano]

Elianna, on 2012-July-06, 19:37, said:

That may be true in reality, but I think that it's not true in theory. What I mean is, I don't think that Kevin did anything wrong (although if I was his boss, I might offer to step in so that the situation doesn't become confrontational between two people who are basically colleagues) but that when he is on job interviews, he may want to have some of these answers of what to do hypothetically.

One of my questions I like asking on interview panels goes something like "Have you ever had to deal with conflict with a colleague and what did you do to get past it?" I look for people who show some signs of reflection about what happened, and think that Kevin would ace this, as he's looking for ideas of how to deal with such a person in the future.

I'm probably way too tired to be making sense, sorry.

I would totally agree if this happened in different context.
But grad students are totally underpaid for the work they do, and in exchange we owe to them that their work isn't something that they have to worry about much - their main energy is meant to be spent studying and doing research. Ken said this very well. I would hope his anatomy professor would see it as a plus that Kevin put email energy running after the late offenders, and that she will work out what's going wrong with the guy who wasn't only 4 weeks late with his questions, but also started lying about why he was late.

[mycroft]

I've learned - and others have learned to do for me - to never rely solely on one form of communication.

If email isn't being responded to, call or IM. If the IM is being ignored, send email, or go up and talk.

I mean, 4 weeks is bad, but if it's a bad procmail script (and we've all, at least those of us that write our own mail handling scripts, made a bad one), the user could really have problems with his email from you - it's being dropped into a folder for his students or whatever.

But even if that's not the problem, if someone is bad at responding to email, they're bad at it; sending more isn't going to help. If they're ignoring their email because they're embarrassed, or busy, or whatever, sending more is still going to be ignored. A different communication pattern may work better.

I see a lot of people who fall into that trap, because communication method X is best for them, it must obviously be the best for everybody; and if it doesn't work with person Y, then more will magically make it work.

[jdeegan]

First, call him and find out if he is in the process of bailing out of the program. If so EOJ. If not ask him why he is so special that he doesn't have to do his job. These days most test questions come from some instructor's textbook manual or database anyway. Don't really sweat it. I'm sure you have plenty of study questions for the students w/o this guy.