A colleague was trying to offload her reports onto me. I forwarded her request to our manager: Please help Emily, shes struggling to manage.
Emily joined our department a year and a half ago. She came across as a pleasant, tidy womandiligent and hard-workinga mother of two. At first, her requests seemed harmless enough: Sorry, Im stuck at the doctors, could you take my call? or I need to pick up my child early from nursery, can you upload my report into the system? Its just a couple of clicks. Our team had always had a culture of supporting one another, and I felt it right to help when I could.
But theres a fine line between mutual support and being saddled with someone elses responsibilities. After a few months, I noticed that the two clicks were morphing into fully-fledged chunks of work. Emily would send messages at five oclock along the lines of: Youll still be at your desk until six, but my youngest is unwell and I have to go. It was a textbook case of emotional manipulation: using guilt and societys expectations. In our culture, being a mother is almost above criticism, and she used this to her advantage for quite some time, until I realised I was running on empty.
Emily carefully cultivated the image of an ever-rushing, heroic woman bravely juggling home life and her job. But the reality was this: our salaries were the same, the only difference being that my evenings were my own, while large parts of her work ended up on my desk. The first time I gently refused, saying I was swamped, she shot back with a bit of passive aggression: But you dont have children, you cant possibly understand how it feels to be torn in all directions. Its a classic trapinvalidating my right to be tired and presenting my reasons as less important.
The tipping point came at the end of the quarter. We had to finish collating the sales figuresa meticulous task requiring proper focus. At 4.45pm, I got an email from Emily, attaching incomplete data and writing: Theyve moved my childs nursery play to this afternoon, so I have to dash. Would you mind finishing this up? Youre the expert, itll take you 15 minutes, and I really cant leave the little one. Ill owe you one tomorrow. In that moment I realised: if I agreed, Id be signing away my free time for months to come. A direct refusal could lead to a campaign of grievances and complaints, so I decided to change tackmove the issue from personal favours to a professional process.
I didnt reply with an indignant message. Instead, I forwarded her email on to our manager, Mr. James Dawson, keeping my tone neutral: Good afternoon, Mr. Dawson. Im forwarding Emilys email. Shes having to rely on other colleagues to finish her tasks due to family commitments and is unable to keep up with her workload during office hours. Would you be able to help Emilyperhaps review her task load or consider reducing her hours temporarily, so she can focus on her family without swamping the rest of us with extra reports? Im fully committed to my own deadlines today and cant take on her assignments without sacrificing quality.
It took a bit of nerve to press SendI worried it would look like I was snitching, or that Id be branded the office villain. But I was fed up with doing two peoples work.
The reaction was immediate. Mr. Dawson hadnt realised I was covering much of Emilys workload, and to him everything had seemed smooth. The next morning, Emily was called into his office. Ive no idea exactly what was said, but she came out flushed and subdued. After that, she never asked me to pick up or finish her work again.
Some might say, You should be kinder, children always come first. Of course, but kindness at someone elses expense is exploitation. If a colleague is truly struggling, they go to management and arrange for remote working, flexible hours, or extra leavethey dont quietly burden others.
What I did wasnt about paybackI simply set some boundaries. Theres a basic rule in the workplace: if you quietly take on someone elses job, its assumed youre fine with it. Emilys stream of requests dried up. Now we maintain a polite, professional relationship, and our team runs as usual. It turned out Emily was entirely capable of managing her own workloadjust so long as she wasnt habitually passing it on to someone else.
A Coworker Tried to Offload Her Reports onto Me—So I Forwarded Her Request to the Boss with, “Please Help Emma, She’s Struggling”
