Email us questions at [email protected], subject line “businesslady.” Previous installments can be found here.
Dear Businesslady,
I work in a small office (like we-don’t-have-any-HR-department small). My co-worker, who is my age (30), is an alcoholic. He used to be a really intense one — like fucking-up-all-the-time, mystery-sick-days, smelling-like-a-distillery, positively-purple-and-about-to-pass-out-in-meetings kind of intense. Then he was sent on a mandatory leave of absence by the management, for detox. He came back sober, but flash forward a year and he’s back to drinking at work on the regular. He’s not as extreme as he was, but his breath smells like alcohol most days, and sometimes he has hand tremors. The other day I secretly smelled the bottle of juice on his desk — it was mostly vodka.
The other day I spoke to him privately about his continued drinking at work. He seemed to be concerned only by the possibility of being fired. He told me he never sought the recommended post-detox treatment (therapy, AA, anything). I tried to be compassionate while mainly sticking to facts (because that’s what the websites about confronting your alcoholic co-worker all said to do), and encouraged him to seek treatment.
He’s tough to work with in general, due to traits that I suspect are linked to his addiction (sullen, silent, uncooperative, undependable, with a ‘victim’ mentality). I’m also worried he won’t be on the ball for some upcoming work responsibilities (we will shortly have many new people to train, and he’s one of the employees being tasked with training). WTF do I do, Businesslady? Am I enabling his addiction if I don’t say something to management? And what are some other important things for people to know about booze and the workplace?
Dear Worried,
This is obviously a problem on a different order of magnitude than “my coworker is being kind of a pain,” and I don’t blame you at all for being concerned.
When you say he went through “detox,” it’s not clear to me whether that was via some kind of program — but the fact that he didn’t do therapy or AA afterward makes me feel like he was going it alone. And that, just by itself, is a little terrifying. My first instinct was to say this was negligent on your company’s part: if management was sufficiently aware of the problem to address it via a leave of absence, I don’t see why they couldn’t have hooked him up with a reputable rehab facility.
…but, I actually don’t know much about this, which is why I brought in a good friend who also happens to be a recovered alcoholic and an HR professional to help with my answer. As it turns out, my initial negative reaction was pretty off-base. Typical treatment programs can’t actually force you to attend AA; that only happens if the criminal justice system gets involved and you get a court-ordered mandate. It’s also worth noting that small companies often terminate people rather than let people return to their jobs after rehab, so all things considered, your company is acting pretty compassionately here.
That said, here’s a little PSA for everyone: if a person is a sufficiently advanced alcoholic, quitting cold-turkey can actually be fatal — something I didn’t fully realize until recently. (Okay, full disclosure, I was binge-watching Intervention on a business trip and ended up going down a Wikipedia rabbit hole on alcohol withdrawal syndrome, which is no joke.) If you know someone has a substance-abuse problem of any kind, it is downright dangerous to suggest that they try to clean up without professional help. Similarly, if you’re struggling with addiction, don’t just try to tough it out on your own.
(On a related note, may I direct you to The Toast’s fascinating and often heartbreaking essays on DUIs and addiction from a few years ago? It’s worth reading if you haven’t seen it, and worth revisiting if you have.)
Anyway, the legalities and practicalities of your coworker’s previous treatment are all in the past — your question is about how to move forward. And there are really two issues here: one of “how do I keep my workplace running smoothly despite having an alcoholic coworker” and another of “how do I help someone who’s endangering their own wellbeing?”
Here’s what my friend had to say about both:
I would recommend that this woman talk to management again, let them know he is drinking on the job, and point to any ways he is unable to do his work. Maybe they will seek treatment for him again and have mandatory alcohol/drug tests required through the treatment or maybe they will terminate him. That is not her burden to bear. She needs to know that she is not helping him by keeping quiet about it. He may only get better if he has some hard consequences. He also may never get better and that is not her fault either.
While it’s difficult to imagine being in your position, I agree with this advice. This man’s health is in jeopardy, and if he’s driving to and from the office, he could be endangering the lives of other people on the road. He’s also presenting a threat to the company, not just by (presumably) making mistakes a sober employee wouldn’t make, but by presenting a disturbing picture to the new hires he’s in charge of training. If I started a new job and smelled booze on the breath of the person who was onboarding me, I’d have strong reservations about the workplace culture and standards of the organization as a whole — and if I had other viable opportunities from my job search, I’d certainly consider pursuing them. You don’t want to lose good people because this guy has an intractable problem.
For the record, though, I’m pretty strongly against drug/alcohol testing in jobs where physical competency and mechanical safety aren’t at issue. Not because I think the world would be a better place if all our coworkers were constantly high and/or drunk (I think this letter pretty clearly illustrates the problems that an intellectually compromised colleague can cause) but because it’s a violation of privacy and civil liberties and not necessarily a reliable indicator of how good an employee someone will be.
As for your last question — well, that’s something that will vary widely depending on your field and the culture of your workplace. I’ve worked for companies where “get totally shitfaced together” was considered a form of team-building, and the results were…problematic. I’ve also cracked a beer while working late and then been relieved when my boss didn’t say anything about it during a surprise visit to my office. I’ve been way too drunk around coworkers, and the resulting embarrassment far outweighed the fun. But then again, some of my most enduring workplace friendships were formed over some in vino veritas real talk.
So it’s difficult to give a hard-and-fast rule. But some good rubrics are as follows: Don’t ever be the drunkest person in the room. If you overindulge, try not to draw attention to it. If you overindulge and do something that makes it obvious, apologize sincerely and then drop it — and make sure you handle yourself more responsibly the next time there’s a booze/workplace overlap.
Most importantly, if it’s hard for you to cut yourself off — even if you feel like you’re in control and no one seems to be reacting negatively to your fun, buzzy self — keep an eye on that. It’s one thing to occasionally lose track of how many little plastic cups of wine you had at a reception; it’s another to realize that you’re constantly closing down the bar. Acknowledging that you have a problem with alcohol (or any addictive substance) and getting treatment for that problem is one of the bravest things a person can do, and I think we should all do our part to eliminate the social stigma that encourages addicts to suffer in silence.
If you have the time and inclination, send me a follow-up note to let me know how your coworker is doing — I’ll be thinking about you both, and hoping that he manages to get help.
(I realize this question is a tough act to follow, so consider this next one a palate cleanser.)
*
Dear Businesslady,
I’m looking for advice about how to help one of my employees develop professionally. I work in a field in which graduate degrees are conditions for entry, and doctorates are highly preferred. There are a number of different professions that may qualify someone for employment in this field, but they all require a lot of advanced education. I supervise a multidisciplinary team, all of whom are highly educated professionals, with one exception: my admin assistant. She’s a young woman with an undergraduate degree in a relevant discipline, who’s interested in pursuing further education but isn’t quite sure where she wants to land yet, and is working for a few years to (a) learn more about the realities of the field and (b) save up some money. It’s a great plan and I was really glad to find her: she’s sharp and hardworking, and very committed.
The problem that I’m running into is that I’m not entirely sure how to support her professional development (which she indicated at the time of hire was important to her, and which I committed to supporting — in my opinion, it’s a core responsibility of management). With my professional staff, I know exactly how to help them build their skills and advance. My admin, in contrast, is so early in her career and not quite focused yet, so I’m not sure how to even begin to talk to her about the practical realities of career advancement. I’ve tried having a couple of conversations with her about it, which end up with me basically saying “so…what do you want to be when you grow up?” and her replying “um, I don’t know…something in [field].” I’ve never supervised someone so junior and inexperienced, so I’m at a little bit of a loss. Even our direct supervision about her regular job duties is basically just running through a list of tasks and me giving her pretty concrete direction. Help, Businesslady! I want to do right by my awesome admin.
Dear Mentor/Manager,
I like pairing this question with the previous one because — in addition to it serving as a mood lightener — you and the LW above are both asking “how do I do right by my coworker?”
I also relate to this situation a lot, because I myself crawled onto my career path from the primordial soup of secretaria. I didn’t exactly know what I wanted to do (or even that my current job, which on most days I love, was a Thing) after undergrad; I just knew that I needed to support myself and that I was reasonably competent at admin tasks.
I wasn’t lucky enough to have a manager who was personally invested in my professional development — at least not in the hands-on way you’re describing — but if someone had asked me back then what I wanted the future to look like, my answers would’ve sounded a lot like your employee’s. It’s not like you get a comprehensive list of possible roles, complete with pros and cons, when you graduate college. You have to figure out what you’re good at, what you like, what excites you, and (just as importantly!) what you loathe via real-world experience.
So I think you’re doing everything right, with the exception of maybe overthinking this a little bit. As an admin, her job is to support the rest of your team — and if she’s doing that well (which it sounds like) then you’re being a good manager. Mentoring her can happen naturally as you continue working together: try to pay attention to what she really enjoys, what she excels at, and what she struggles at, and then help her understand the way those capabilities align (or don’t) with jobs in your field. If she’s great at X but it’s irrelevant to higher-level roles in your industry, flag that for her. If she’s terrible at Y but it’s essential to her advancement, find a course she can take to improve her skills. If she’s clearly burning with passion for Z, help her identify graduate programs that will capitalize on that interest.
At the same time, try to find ways for her to get a more in-depth understanding of your team’s projects (to the extent that her workload and your process allows). Sitting in on meetings, being copied on emails, and things like that are often the best way to get a realistic sense of what “a job in X field” is like on a day-to-day basis. If she shows particular aptitude in a certain area, you might even consider expanding her role to include those duties and give her some hands-on experience (although again, this needs to be something that makes sense in the context of your organization’s workflow).
It’s not your responsibility to ensure that she ends up on a rewarding career path — but if you take the steps I’ve outlined above, that (coupled with your clear personal investment in this person, which I really admire) will set her up for success. Keep in mind too that her priorities might change over time; if she leaves to pursue a different field or work for a competitor, that’s not on you either. You’re clearly making a more than good-faith effort to help her along, and the rest is up to her.
I wish more managers considered their employees’ futures in such a thoughtful and big-picture way, so kudos in helping reinforce my faith in (professional) humanity.
—Businesslady
Oooh this second question is very relevant to me, as I’m about to hire a new admin assistant. It’s a little different situation because I’m hoping this person will eventually grow into a higher up role at my organization. But, I noticed that for the two months I was managing her predecessor (I’m new to my role here as well), our check ins definitely took the form of some friendly chit-chat followed by a list of tasks. I want to develop a deeper mentoring relationship with this new person, and I’m trying to figure out how to structure that. Does anyone have ideas for questions I can ask at regular check ins, or ways I can format those weekly conversations to focus on her professional development in a way that’s not overly touchy-feely?
I think, as she becomes aware of the projects the rest of your team works on, you could ask her which ones she finds particularly interesting and which ones she’d like to be more engaged with- that could be an opportunity to stretch and grow, and confirm for her that you see her potential.
One thing that struck me reading LW2 and your comment is that mentoring is a two-way street, and for good reason. Developing the skills to take advantage of mentoring is a really important life skill, and while I’m so impressed by the deep care for these young people and their careers, I also encourage you both to leave some of the responsibility on your mentee. Offer, discuss, but let them take some initiative.
Also, in my work, I’ve found dedicated “mentoring” time to be helpful, partly because it lets me do my job a lot of the time, and prepare for mentoring conversations (depending on my mentor, I guess, I’m lucky to have a few). So while working some professional development into your weekly meetings sounds great, maybe a structured once-a-month dedicated check in might be helpful?
My suggestion, as an admin for about a decade and now a clerk (working as a student while in school) is to do what my best managers did: change the environment when we chat (don’t just chat with me at my desk or in a conference room – let’s go to lunch or for coffee), ask what my goals are and if I have any deadlines, and welcome my feedback on actual projects by asking for my opinion on things, and if I don’t seem interested, take note and try a different topic next time.
Probably the best thing my last manager did for my development was not allowing me to just dig into the type of work that I enjoyed and was best at. He gave me a big project that was outside my comfort zone, and outside my natural strengths, but would help me get some of the addtional skills I’d need to progress further. To keep me from being overwhelmed, he made it clear that he understood that this was a challenge for me, that he expected me to screw things up and that we’d have to fix problems, and that while delivering the project would be good, he was more concerned with it’s potential to develop me as a staff member.
Throughout the projectwe also had fortnightly catch ups where we’d talk specifically about how I felt about how things were going. We often did this away from his desk to make it a bit more informal and make it clear that this was something different than a regular status update. Meetings weren’t focused on what had been done, but on why some things went well and why other things didn’t, and how to think about what might become a problem later, and how to deal with the types of tasks that made me particularly stressed or uncomfortable.
One thing that has stuck with me a few years after my first job out of undergrad: any time my supervisor said I was good at something. Not just that x thing I produced is fine or looks good, but telling me that I should write a slightly awkward email because I was good at handling that kind of situation. It’s hard to get a feel for what your actual strengths are outside of school, because positive feedback and any idea of how you compare to your peers (i.e. a grade) are sometimes rare. Getting some outside perspective on what you might want to specialize in, talk up in your cover letters, etc. is so helpful.
One thing that I really appreciated was that at annual review time, my manager asked me what work I was interested in doing more of. I mentioned that I missed public speaking, and she passed that along and I got invited to do some work that involved giving presentations (which I love, because I am a weirdo).
So, basically, ask questions about what they are enjoying, what they want to do more of, what they are struggling with, and then find ways to support that. If they really like X task and are good at it, see if there is a way for them to do more of it. If they are struggling with Y task, see if there are courses they can take to improve, and then figure out a way to work that training into their schedule. If there is work that they are good at but don’t get to do much of, but that also is something that would benefit the team, see if you can throw some of it their way (e.g. at an old job, my boss knew I was pretty tech-savvy and we needed a website manager, so I got that task, which was good experience for me, and provided a vital service for the team). If you have a formal appraisal process, you might include some professional development as performance goals, and help her find a way to work that into her regular duties (e.g. if there is a course she could take, make it clear that it is okay with you that she does an hour a week or whatever).
I used to work at a place where drinking was very much A Part of the Culture. One useful rule that I used in dinner/cocktail hour scenarios was to always stay one drink behind my boss. For more informal, party-type scenarios, it actually helps to set a mental limit beforehand, so you don’t get into the “my workplace is giving me free stuff, I need to take advantage of it!” headspace.
I used to work at a place where getting totally wasted was a part of the culture, starting with weekly Beer Fridays. I started there as an intern when I was 20 so I couldn’t even begin to know better. I made out with EVERYONE. It is truly amazing that I have an actual career now. So uh yeah, I have a pretty strict two-drink maximum for all work functions now.
um thankfully this is not a part of my workplace but drinking is often a feature of conferences. My rule of thumb is drink way less than I want to.
Some other things LW2 could do is facilitate opportunities for informational interviewing or work shadowing. LW2, I don’t think you need to do anything about this just yet except let your employee know that it’s an option when she’s ready.Let her know that when she gets to the stage wwhere she’s thinking, “hm, X’s role looks pretty interesting”, she can come to you and you’ll see if it’s possible to organise a day or two’s work shadowing. No promises, but you’re open to it if it’s feasible.
You could also let her know that if she wants to do work shadowing outside your organisation/sector, you’re not going to hold it against her as “lack of loyalty” or whatever, and that in principle you’d be happy to organise annual leave or unpaid leave as required.
Then, leave it up to her! Giving her some ideas of what’s possible and then backing of is respectful and helpful, so don’t overthink it!
Also, introductions. If the admin really is sharp and hard-working and will reflect creditably on you, feel out a colleague or two in the field about whether they’d be willing to have an informational lunch with a smart young person who is looking to go into the field and would like some first-hand information about her options.
The second question/answer is reassuring to me because I’m going to graduate soon, and don’t really know what profession I want to go into. I’m fairly ambitious but am not sure that I want to go straight onto a graduate scheme which is designed to propel you into a leadership position in a short timeframe.. so it’s good to know that other pathways still exist!
Just chiming in to say that I had a similar situation as Businesslady and it has worked out very well! I graduated college and got an entry-level job- spent a few years there learning how to be an employee & figuring out what interested me, then switched to another position that was more related to that. Then I narrowed it down even further and was able to find my current position, which is something that never really showed up on the “career” selections at school but which is a very good fit for me. There are SO MANY ways to make a living out there. Now I am going back to school part-time for my master’s- it’s 10+ years since I graduated, but I’m glad I waited this long to pursue higher ed, because now I’m very sure I’ll be studying something I enjoy and will find useful (and that should be worth the student loans). Higher ed is GREAT, but it can lock you into one specific career path. I am really grateful now I didn’t get into those PhD programs I applied to just out of college, because I like what I’m doing now so much more. I am of the opinion that it’s a good move to spend some time between college and grad school to get some hands-on experience & figure out the best choice for you.
Letter 1 makes me instinctively react with wanting more privacy for him. I don’t mean that you have to keep it a secret that you know he’s drinking, it’s not that kind of privacy I’m thinking of. I mean privacy as in I don’t like it when people try to analyse other people’s psychological problems, disabilities and addictions and relate those problems to the person’s character, or try to judge how they’re coping, or try to figure out the best solution for them. Maybe integrity is a better word? This goes for parts of Businesslady’s answer too.
Knowing someone with an issue, even a stigmatised issue, is not about demonstrating compassion (it comes off as pity) or trying to fix them. It doesn’t matter whether he has a “victim mentality”, if he’s sullen or if he demonstrates enough worry to other people. He can have thoughts, worries and personality traits that aren’t visible, even though he has an issue. I mean, that’s obvious, and yet… not? Culturally, there’s this idea that people without serious issues are inherently more competent at being human than people with issues, so that “troubled” people are open books that anyone more competent should be free to read and edit. So, beware of this trap, because it’s easy to go there.
The situation here is that he is drunk at work, which he is not allowed to be. He is drunk because of a known medical problem, which is something that he and his doctor and HR need to talk about. The most compassionate thing to do is to treat disability and addiction like it’s a normal, human-sized problem. He needs to get it sorted, obviously, so someone (either you or him) needs to tell the boss, because he can’t be drunk at work. But it’s not helpful to try to assess his problem and his treatment options. You wouldn’t do that if he had, like, knee pain.
For question #2, attending a conference in your field can be a good experience for a younger person. I remember being so excited when a former boss and mentor let me, a young staffer(!), attend a professional conference. (Oddly now, as someone who has to go to a lot of conferences, they seem more like a chore. Conferences are apparently the opposite of youth; they are wasted on the old.)
Of course, conferences can be an expense that perhaps the supervisor doesn’t have available, but depending on the field, there may be local, one day or half day conferences.
LW2, are you able to give this person a couple hours a week, or more time on a short-term basis, to contribute to a non-admin project? Like, if it’s not vital for her to be covering a phone all day or something, and she wouldn’t need a ton of training to assist in program work, and it’s within your authority to move her around, there’s got to be a professional colleague who could use a few hours of her time. Which would have the added benefit of telling her “we’re interested in keeping you here as you progress.”
If I were LW2’s admin what I’d ask for a chunk of hours here and there dedicated to learning some of the more common specialized software in [field]. For example, in my field, Adobe CS is the thing everyone needs to know. An hour a week of training (even self-directed) could go a long way to building a skill that makes her more versatile and able to pinch-hit for sick or busy co-workers.
Our admin learned project management and CMS software, which was her ticket to stepping out of the “secretary” role and into a true project management role.
Agreed, and additionally if there are any skills that your company lacks, see if your admin can pick them up (or already has them!). Depending on the workplace, admin can be uniquely suited to picking up new skills on the fly that other more focussed roles can’t get to. This helps her with some professional development, and supports her in supporting the team.
(I’ve been an admin at a small not-for-profit for a number of years now. Our specialised workers are too busy or otherwise not inclined to pick up skills that are incredibly useful to us, so that’s where I come in! You’d never believe how often someone with a wide and seemingly erratic skill set comes in handy.)
LW2, I’d like to second the idea about sending her to a conference in the field. If I’ve correctly guessed where you work, the main relevant conference (ahem) is local next year, so it shouldn’t be difficult or costly for her to go to it.
As a female person who has a career and was once earlier in it, I think that mentoring intent is half the battle. When I was in my early twenties, I got a lot out of a few lunches with my various lady bosses in which they just listened to what I had to say, and told me about their own trajectories. It helped me feel that it was valid to take seriously the question of what I wanted to be when I grew up. I think women are still given the message a lot that they shouldn’t care too much about their careers, and it’s good to counteract that with your taking her seriously. The only real actionable piece of advice I got out of any of those lunches was “don’t go to law school if you don’t see yourself practicing law,” but just having someone take the question seriously was valuable to me.
I’d also add that I was a young person who didn’t know what I wanted to do, and experienced it at the time as “not being passionate about anything.” But looking back, I think the real issue was that I was interested in a lot of things and good at a lot of things, and had trouble picking just one. As I got older, I became more okay with the idea of picking one path and sticking with it, even if it meant forgoing other possibilities.
I want to hear about your process of picking your one thing! I’m 31 and have been paralyzed by “what I want to be when I grow up” since high school—I have skills and interests that are all over the map, and no one clear path or passion that makes sense of all (or even the majority) of them.
Oh me too, in many ways.
I’ve gravitated towards data entry tasks in my jobs, ever since discovering that I really enjoyed doing it when I worked part-time in the mall, which has led me to working with databases, and I adore it. I kind of wish I’d gone into information analysis and architecture in undergrad, since I was into that kind of thing even in high school (I was one of the only girls in the coding classes), but I also love the art and history (and art history) aspects of my job, and admin/receptionist stuff in general.
But even as I love the information analysis and database things I’m doing, and for being mostly self-taught I’m really far ahead of a lot of other people I work with, but I still feel like there is so much left to learn, and how does that even happen without school (which, I’m not in a position to do a formal program, for various reasons), and what about all my other skills and things i get passionate about, how do I figure out how to develop these things and what else is out there that might work for me???
I’m 31 too and still in an entry-level position after 5 years because I never had a good idea of what kind of jobs were out there that I might like and could work towards, only that many of the obvious choices had very big negatives (I have severe social anxiety and do not do well with on-going relationships or not having a barrier between me and the other person, figurative or literal – people are like “you can’t possibly have social anxiety issues! look how fantastic of a receptionist you are!” and i’m like “look at my enormous fucking desk and also I never see 90% of those people ever again”, but I digress).
(Actually, I guess on my side, I do know exactly what I want to do, but it’s more the problem of not having the appropriate background to follow through, and not knowing how to get that experience, or else capitalize on my other interests and skills for other things I don’t even know exist.)
I’m a bit older than you and had graduated from college into a good economy, so by the time my early thirties rolled around, I had some savings that I could throw at the problem (not a lot, but I spent all my savings on exploring my options). I also had a partner who could pick up some of the slack, supporting us-wise. So in this regard, I’m lucky, and both of those things helped facilitate a career change.
In my case, I worked for an organization where I didn’t get to use [skill set] as much as I wanted to, and that started to really bother me. The field I was in was adjacent to another that had occasion for a lot of [skill set] so I started exploring that a bit by reading about it and talking to people I knew through work, and found it was adjacent to yet another field that also had a lot of [skill set]. Neither of these fields was anything I’d been exposed to previously. I mean, I knew they existed, but it wouldn’t have occurred to me to pursue them. Then I spent all my savings exploring the second of the two fields that values [skill set], enough to decide I could do it and be good at it and liked it enough that if I did this for the rest of my career, that would be okay with me….. And then there was some additional schooling…. And now it is my career, and it has really grown on me from “This will do, and at least I get to use [skill set]” to my actually really loving it.
I think the two things that are tranferable from this particular story are 1. reaching a point where you decide you just need to pick something and go with it and then really committing to it and 2. feeling really naggingly bothered by not getting to do something you are good at, and finding a way to pursue doing that thing.
P.S. The career change has also involved completely working my ass off to make it happen, so that is transferable advice as well.
LW2 here (replying with a burner account) to say: um, yes, either a remarkable coincidence on the “main relevant conference” comment or you did guess where I work. Do we know each other? Awkward.
But thank you for the suggestion, and to everyone else for the excellent recommendations!
Hey LW2, sorry if I weirded you out. I was thinking that what you described matched a bunch of organizations I could think of in the same general field, mostly geographically close together. We probably don’t know each other! On the off-chance we do, I wouldn’t think less of you for trying to do something nice for someone else, and wouldn’t let on to anyone else that I’d observed such a thing (seriously).
uh well, these are all very important questions, but I’m mainly here to say that Sue Wilson is my Queen and I would read a column about landfill waste consultancy if it sported a picture of her looking competent and chic
Now I don’t have to post a comment asking who that amazing-looking woman in the header is! 🙂
I worked at a very small company (3-4 employees), but I was the only one on-site at boss’s home office. Over the months I worked there, it became clear that the boss was becoming more reliant on alcohol, and at one point asked me whether it was ok to buy Valium online from India (I told him no). Eventually he went to rehab for a week, during which I had to take care of the office and all the business, which was a difficult situation as I was a fairly new employee. After that everything was ok for a few months, until it started to happen again and he was definitely also taking the Valium from the internet but I didn’t think it was my responsibility as an employee to take care of him personally, so I just focused on being really great at my job. I didn’t know if it was my place to tell him drinking 40s at 10am was not really the best business practice. There was more crying from an adult who was not my friend than I was comfortable with. He was also having marriage problems and got kicked out of the house, which was difficult as the office was at his house. Eventually the other employees quit and I was the last one. When he went to rehab the second time after a DUI (“I was just trying to move my car so I didn’t get a ticket!” he said, and I told him that he should have rather got the parking ticket than the DUI) I said I’d stay and take care of everything, but on the train home I just started crying into a pad I had in my bag because I didn’t have tissues and called to quit later that day.
This definitely isn’t inspirational or helpful at all, LW1, but just saying I feel ya.
I had a somewhat similar experience. First job right out of college, working for a 3-4 person non-profit, and the second-in-command was this guy who came in late, always looked like hell, would have giant mysterious bruises, smelled funny. Always had the quakes, his handwriting was illegible, but he blamed it on nerve damage from breaking his arm as a kid (and had the scar to back it up). Anybody with a little more street smarts would probably peg him as an alcoholic. My coworker thought he was on pills or something.
One day he comes back from his lunch break, in a total haze, and goes, “I just went home, and my wife was gone. She took her cat and all of her stuff. Left the wedding photos though, not sure why she thought I’d want those.” (This was a recurring question. Even as time passed he didn’t understand why she left him those wedding photos, why she thought she’d want them. It never occurred to him that she left them because she never wanted to see his face again.) He came back to work because he was in shock and had no idea what else to do with himself. Not long after he came out to us as an alcoholic, which connected a ton of dots. His wife had tried to help him, but eventually gave up. She called his parents the night before she left and gave them a number for a suicide hotline. The work and planning and manpower it must have taken to assemble everyone, wait until he left for work, grab and pack up all her shit, then split and head to the next state all before his lunch break…it was clear she had lost all hope of working things out.
After that he dried out, had a sponsor and everything, though not before hacking his wife’s email accounts and deciding that I was his personal therapist. His handwriting became increasingly legible. He became a much more interesting person to be around, like his actual personality was just drowned beneath all that whiskey, and it was finally starting to emerge. For a while, we were friendly, and I kind of enjoyed interacting with him. But I also came to the conclusion that, drunk or not, he was still a Nice Guy (TM) with a victim complex who felt that he could do no wrong, could not possibly ask too much of anyone because he was so nice to being with, and nobody should ever hurt his feelings or tell him no. The massive anxiety and depression issues didn’t go away, either. He was just a sad-sack man-baby who was incapable of understanding anything outside of, “But this is what I want.” The alcoholism definitely didn’t help, but he was just a shitty person. At some point I threatened to sue him for sexual harassment (warranted, but I’ll spare you the details), solidifying his hatred of all women the planet over, and eventually he found a job about 7 states away and left. I still have him blocked on Facebook.
Which, again, isn’t really inspirational or helpful, but I understand. Substance abuse is no joke. And ultimately, you can’t save someone who is self destructive.
I worked at a very small company (3-4 employees), but I was the only one on-site at boss's home office. Over the months I worked there, it became clear that the boss was becoming more reliant on alcohol, and at one point asked me whether it was ok to buy Valium online from India (I told him no). Eventually he went to rehab for a week, during which I had to take care of the office and all the business, which was a difficult situation as I was a fairly new employee. After that everything was ok for a few months, until it started to happen again and he was definitely also taking the Valium from the internet but I didn't think it was my responsibility as an employee to take care of him personally, so I just focused on being really great at my job. I didn't know if it was my place to tell him drinking 40s at 10am was not really the best business practice. There was more crying from an adult who was not my friend than I was comfortable with. He was also having marriage problems and got kicked out of the house, which was difficult as the office was at his house. Eventually the other employees quit and I was the last one. When he went to rehab the second time after a DUI ("I was just trying to move my car so I didn't get a ticket!" he said, and I told him that he should have rather got the parking ticket than the DUI) I said I'd stay and take care of everything, but on the train home I just started crying into a pad I had in my bag because I didn't have tissues and called to quit later that day.
This definitely isn't inspirational or helpful at all, LW1, but just saying I feel ya.
(I realize I’m super late to the party here) For LW2, that last comment about copying her on emails is huge. I would go so far as to say never underestimate the educational value of the BCC field. In my various admin/support jobs, I’ve learned the most by just reading how my bosses or supervisors handled things, and seeing what they actually had to handle.