This is not your problem.

mrsconn23 · April 2022

Dear Prudence,

One of my colleagues, someone I admired very much, left recently, and her replacement is … well, a little lackluster. Her work has been okay, I guess, but has lacked the panache and insight of her predecessor. I know she had big shoes to fill, and my expectations are not her concern (I’m not her manager, after all), but sometimes it has felt like she’s not making much effort to do her job particularly well. It reflects on the whole company as her work is public-facing.

Now she’s gone off on maternity leave. Prudie, her temporary replacement is absolutely head and shoulders above her in quality. He’s an external temp but he’s really knocking it out of the park here these last few weeks. My worry is that when she comes back from maternity leave, naturally he’ll leave, and we’ll have to go back to lackluster output that honestly isn’t doing the company any favors. I feel like going to the boss and saying we should keep him on, plus-or-minus her staying in another role, as he’s patently far better than she has so far demonstrated herself to be.

To add to the mix, they’re both POC and I know Black women have really not been well-represented in our field, and it feels regressive to want to replace her with a man, even if he is also Black, and especially when we ought to be making it less of a professional risk to take maternity leave. But his output is just objectively so much better than hers, and feedback from customers says the same. I guess it’s possible she comes back with a bit more energy and pizzazz, but I’m not hopeful. Any thoughts?

— Temp Is Awesome

CharmedPam · April 2022

I think coworker has rights when she comes back. I don’t know much about the maternity law, but she is guaranteed a position when she comes back right? Does it have to be the same one?….can they move her where she can do better? And maybe this temp doesn’t even WANT the perm job?

climbingsingle · April 2022

I really dislike this LW.

MyNameIsNot · April 2022

If it's effecting you and your work, talk to your own manager about how. Not from the context of hiring/replacing, but constructive feedback on the parts that impact your work are reasonable.

But really, it just sounds like you're a busy body and you want to meddle in something you think you know about someone else's work.

mrsconn23 · April 2022

LW, you have no standing here regarding who is in this position by your own admission. If you are on a team with this position and have collaborative interactions/meetings, you can certainly share ideas on what you think is effective communication (using examples like feedback from customers and other data that supports your points). Also, 'pizzazz' and 'panache' may not be things the powers that be are looking at as requirements to do this job.

This letter reads like you have a personal issue with your colleague. It definitely feels very patronizing. I think a little self-reflection on your own biases could be helpful. Also, focus on doing your own job well and with all that panache and pizzazz you have inside wanting to be let out.

charlotte989875 · April 2022

Honestly- stay out of it. If there’s a problem that’s impacting your actual work, raise that with your manager, but otherwise this is so not your business.

Honestly- LW sounds like a jerk trying to get a new mother replaced coming back from leave and I hate it.

MissKittyDanger · April 2022

CharmedPam said:

I think coworker has rights when she comes back. I don’t know much about the maternity law, but she is guaranteed a position when she comes back right? Does it have to be the same one?….can they move her where she can do better? And maybe this temp doesn’t even WANT the perm job?

Yes.
In Canada there is varying maternity leaves.
Typical, you take 12-18m off {reduced pay obv} and you're guaranteed your job back.

I believe in government you can take a leave of absence for up to 5yrs {no pay} and you're guaranteed a job back - BUT it may not be same job. {have to be at least what you're qualified to do}

But also I know a lot of people take temp jobs for reasons.

banana468 · April 2022

If this is a situation where the person did not get back to you in a timely manner and YOUR work suffered due to their inefficiencies then that's worth reporting.

But also consider that maternity leave doesn't just start and someone expecting needs to leave for more doctor appointments and be out of the office.

What is troubling to me is that you aren't looking at this from an internal perspective regarding the weakness of your own company that perhaps they hired someone who wasn't trained well BY them and then knowing she was going to be out of the office she knew a lot of work was going to need to be delegated.

Do not look at this in a vacuum. Your company is a group of workers- what could you all do better?

short+sassy · April 2022

CharmedPam said:

I think coworker has rights when she comes back. I don’t know much about the maternity law, but she is guaranteed a position when she comes back right? Does it have to be the same one?….can they move her where she can do better? And maybe this temp doesn’t even WANT the perm job?

Oh yeah! They might be able to put her in another position (not sure about that), but they can't lay her off and replace her with the temp. That's just begging for a probably winnable lawsuit on the part of the coworker.

And all of that is even assuming the company prefers the temp. That might just be the LW's personal opinion. It's also none of their business. If management and/or HR have an issue with the coworker's performance, that's for them to deal with.

---------------------------------------

I used to have light HR duties at another job. People who are in the service and called back for active duty are also guaranteed to be able to come back to their jobs...((cough, cough))...but only if they still exist. Here are my stories, the second one is long:

I was working for a defense contractor, so a lot of our employees were former military and in the reserves. This company was especially stellar in that they would pay the difference between the military's salary and the person's salary at the company, while an employee was either doing their two weeks/year of reserve time or got called back for active duty. There is no government requirement to do that.

We had two guys get called back for active duty.

1) We had a long-term temp for one of them. The original employee was actually gone for over a year but, upon his return, we had to lay the other person off because OG was returning to his job. They were both great employees, so that wasn't an issue. It was just disappointing we didn't have a different job available to offer to the temp.

2) But the other guy? He was a POS. The project he was working on was ending. He was going to be laid off with 7 other people. It had already been announced.

Apparently, he contacted his military branch and requested to be put back on active duty. And, because he was still an employee on his active duty return date, the company paid him all that money for the 18 months he was on active.

But that's not even really my issue with the guy.

Upon his return, he seemed to expect us to create a job for him out of whole cloth. He definitely would have been given any open position he was qualified for. But we didn't have one, which he knew full well. He sent a lawyer letter to the corporate office threatening a lawsuit because "he wasn't being allowed to return to his job". They caved, but punished our division by taking his whole salary out of our overhead budget which we didn't have much of.

My boss was so PO'ed! He made that "job" as uncomfortable as he could, while still staying within legal lines. We had to send him much further away office from his house than before, because we worked at a client site and people who weren't working on that client's project weren't allowed there.

The other office was like, "What do you want us to do with him?" My boss, "Whatever you want. But I want him in a chair at 8am, on the dot. And he doesn't leave until 5pm. Don't let him use the Internet or his cell phone, unless it is a break. If you all don't have anything for him to do, then he can spend all day staring at the wall."

It worked. The guy found a job within about one month. Never mind that he'd been back home for 2-3 months of military vacation time before "officially returning". I know he didn't bother looking for a job during that time because he told me.

downtondiva · April 2022

Unless this woman is directly affecting your work, I don't think you should say anything. Your boss is probably aware of customer feedback, and it's ultimately up to them what to do about her work when she gets back from maternity leave. Let them make that decision and stay out of it.

This is not your problem.

Re: This is not your problem.

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