refusing to work for a customer for moral reasons, a horrendous bathroom problem, and more
It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. How can I refuse to work for a customer I have moral objections to?
As a field technician, how do you refuse, professionally, to do work for a customer that you have deep moral objections to?
I work for a company that provides essential building services (think fire alarm, plumbing, HVAC, electrical) and believe that everyone deserves to have a safe, healthy, and comfortable work environment, which I work hard to maintain. Whoever you are, if you have a problem, I’ll do whatever, wherever, to try to fix it. I will always be polite and professional, but I refuse to support, let’s say, customers that kidnap others off the street without due process, or their detention facilities, or logistical support, etc.
It hasn’t come up yet, but it might, and I won’t know until I’m dispatched. I might not even know until I walk in the door. Is this something I should bring up proactively or wait until it happens? What’s the best way to deal with it if I suddenly find myself the very last place I want to be?
In some jobs, you’d be able to talk to your manager ahead of time and say you’re not comfortable serving those clients and ask if there’s a way to ensure you’re not sent to them. In others, that would be a no-go. So it’s going to depend on what your company culture is like, your relationship with your manager, and how much political capital you have there. They might say, “We’ll do our best but we can’t guarantee it; if you’re the one available then, you’ll have to do it.” They also might say, “You can’t pick and choose your assignments that way at all.”
So you might need to decide how firm a stance you’re willing to take — or, more to the point, what consequences you’re willing to accept for that stance. Are you willing to lose your job over it? If so, that gives you a lot of freedom to simply refuse, knowing that you’ve thought through the potential repercussions and are willing to accept whatever they might be. If you’re not willing to lose your job over it and they send you to one of those customers, you don’t have much room to maneuver, unfortunately.
2. Quitting when I work for a (difficult) friend
I work as a front of house manager for a sports bar owned by a good friend. I have previously tried to get out of the service industry, and got sucked back in three years ago when she bought the place and gathered her professional friends to help her evolve and step up the place. We’ve made great progress, but she’s not a manager and I’m tired of hand-holding her and the employees.
I manage the employees with a fair hand. I trust them to do their jobs, let me know when they’ll be late without judgement, actively tell them to not tell me the reason for off days, and help close or serve when busy. She takes lateness personally, has exacting expectations for everything, “helps” by taking over, and there’s a general increasing sense that she doesn’t trust us. I will not be able to change how she thinks of managing, as she has similar problems with parenting her children and dealing with her husband and mother-in-law.
I want to start applying for jobs that are more technical, and step down as manager. I have no current reason to flat-out quit and would enjoy continuing to bartend on weekends. I quit working for her once before when she had a side hustle cleaning houses. She was absolutely livid, not at me, but the person who recommended the job and went to bat for me as a reference. I don’t know how to word stepping down. I want to stay in some capacity, but I’d rather give her a heads-up before leaning into true job-hunting.
Ideally with a friend you should be able to say, “I’m realizing I want to step down from the manager role sometime this year, although I’d be happy to stay on to bartend. I’m going to start looking around and I wanted to give you a heads-up so you can start planning.” But if you don’t feel you can say that to her ahead of time, you’re not obligated to; you can let her know once you have firm plans in place and are ready to formally give notice. And really, if she was livid the last time you quit (even if it wasn’t directed at you), she’s forfeited her right for much advance notice this time. So: do you feel comfortable using language like that? If you don’t, that’s a sign to just wait until you have firmer plans.
Also, be ready to reconsider staying on to bartend if she handles this badly. Some people are better left as friends rather than colleagues, and definitely rather than bosses.
3. My coworker’s bathroom visits are horrible for us all
I work for a small IT company. There are only two technicians, two managers, and an accountant/bookkeeper. My coworker, Chad, claims to have a laundry list of medical issues, and one of them is constant pooping. I don’t know any other way to put it. This man goes to the restroom up to five times a day to poop. For context, we’re in a nice but small building. It looks like a house. The men’s restroom is right next to the back door, which is where we all enter and exit. The women’s restroom is close to the front door and right next to the CEO’s office. The restrooms were previously the opposite. The assigned restrooms were recently switched, which is perfectly fine except for the fact that the CEO switched them so he wouldn’t have to constantly hear loud, violent pooping right next to his open office door. You can hear everything and he doesn’t even try to hold back.
I am the type of person for whom the thought of making any poop noises loud enough for someone to hear makes me want to lay down in traffic, so the fact that he doesn’t take any over-the-counter stuff like gas relief pills or Imodium or anything is insane to me. He just expects us to deal with it, I guess. He even brings up his stomach issues during meetings as a form of updates with good news from his doctor like, “My doc said I’m eating too much fiber, so now that I know my issues should be over!” only to take a ridiculously loud poop right after the meeting and multiple times a day every day after that. I could care less how long he spends in the restroom, and I promise I’m not judging him if this is indeed something he can’t do anything to avoid.
I understand some people aren’t fortunate in health and have digestion issues, and I feel for him. However, I am incredibly uncomfortable hearing the abominations coming from the restroom. It’s distracting and so gross. We even have a couple of white noise machines but they don’t drown the noise out enough. Our manager is aware of the issue, since he reassigned the restrooms to avoid hearing it so loudly, but he can still hear it even after the men’s restroom has changed to the other end of the building. Can nothing be done? I’m really frustrated by this as it’s every single day without fail. I dread hearing him walk to the restroom. What can anybody do in this situation (or should I say shitutation)?
Chad has expressed that he appreciates people being bluntly honest with him, but I am just someone who cannot be blunt to anyone, no matter how badly they get on my nerves. I just deal with them as best I can and hope the behavior stops because I have no backbone and have never been able to stand up for myself.
Oh no, I’m sorry. There likely isn’t anything anyone can do about this; it is sometimes an unfortunate reality of working with humans.
If it helps, I wouldn’t assume that the reason Chad doesn’t take over-the-counter meds is because he doesn’t see any need to and instead is just blithely and explosively pooping away when a gas relief pill would stop it. Especially since it’s clearly something he and his doctor are actively working on, it’s more likely that he’s tried those options and they haven’t helped or there are other reasons why he can’t use them. Obviously you shouldn’t get so far into his medical business that you would know that kind of thing (despite his apparent frequent updates at meetings!) but it’s always useful to possibilities like in mind; often when there should be an easy solution for a medical problem, there’s a reason the person isn’t using it. (And because of that, even if you were someone who did feel comfortable being blunt, I don’t think bluntness would help.)
The one thing that seems like it would help and is within your office’s control is better soundproofing. Since the CEO is obviously aware of the situation shitutation, why not propose (ideally via a group of you) installing better soundproofing in the bathroom?
4. Can you fire someone who physically can’t do part of their job?
I’m curious about the legalities around accepting/denying candidates (in the U.S.) based on physical/health requirements.
I am not in a hiring position but work in an elementary school, and something I have seen come up a lot is hiring support staff (for special education classrooms with students who have significant needs) who struggle with the more active aspects of the job. These are students who sometimes need to be chased or blocked in order to stop them from leaving the school building or behaving in unsafe manners, for themselves or other students. On several occasions, I’ve seen staff members who are unable to do things like chase after runners or help with safety situations due to (from my perspective) age or health reasons. I’ve also worked with a staff member who self-disclosed some form of narcolepsy, who fell asleep multiple times to the point where their students were placed in unsafe situations (leaving the classroom, leaving the building, etc.).
Is it legal to let staff members go when their health or age leaves them unable to perform these necessary aspects of the job (keeping high-needs special education students safe and supervised)? None of the schools I’ve worked at have been overstaffed enough to have extra people to step in when these staff members are unable to perform the full extent of their roles.
When someone is struggling to perform some of the duties of their job for health reasons, the Americans with Disabilities Act requires employers to engage in what’s called “the interactive process,” where both parties try to figure out if there’s an accommodation that will allow the person to perform the essential functions of their job. Employers are required to make those accommodations as they long as it doesn’t cause them “undue hardship” (the bar for which is fairly high). If the task is a minor or infrequent one, the accommodation might be simply reassigning it. If that’s not possible and the task is important, and there’s no other accommodation that would allow them to perform the job, at that point the position would not be protected.
5. Should my resume note that I was laid off?
I’m trying to update my resume and not sure how to represent the time I spent with [Company Name] now that I was laid off. Would it be accurate or appropriate to list the dates as “Dec 2023 – May 2025 (Laid Off)” to provide context?
You can include “(laid off),” but you don’t need to. Sometimes it makes sense to do that if you’re trying to explain a choppy work history, but otherwise there’s really no need — hiring managers who want to know why you left the job will ask.
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