Barnstorming on an Invisible Segway

Posted by Ask a Manager

https://www.askamanager.org/2026/01/coworker-spends-too-long-in-the-bathroom-should-i-fire-someone-by-email-and-more.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=35048

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. My coworker spends so long in the bathroom that I’m stuck with all the work

Can anything realistically be done about a coworker who spends ages in the bathroom?

We work in a cafeteria in four-hour shifts where there’s only one hour we serve food. It’s two people on our shift, me and Fergus.

He’s in the bathroom for at least 15-20 minutes, sometimes twice a shift. He does sometimes wait until it’s slow, but sometimes he takes so long it goes into when we’re busy. Like yesterday he went at 5:25, and at 5:45 I got fed up and yelled his name. He finally came back. Lunch starts at 6 and we actually start making it at 5:30, so I was stuck doing everything alone pretty much.

He swears our food is what’s giving him stomach issues, but he does this even if he just got to work, and also won’t stop eating the food here.

I complained to our boss today, and it’s on her list of stuff to take care of, but as far as we know all she can really do is make him get a doctor’s note. (We’re in Canada by the way, so the grand cost of that is $20 if he goes to a walk-in clinic.) She kind of wants to tell him he can’t take his 15-minute break if he spends that long in the bathroom, but I’m not sure that’s legal.

Is there anything she can do about this? Three of us have complained about it, and one person said he was in there for 45 minutes.

I can’t speak to Canadian laws, but in general the best way for you to address this — versus your boss — is to keep letting your boss know that you don’t have enough staffing to get the work done because Fergus is in the bathroom for such long periods. What she does about that is between her and Fergus; the part that affects you, and the part you should stay focused on, is that you’re left doing a two-person job by yourself for long stretches. In other words, you don’t have to solve the bathroom question, which is good news! Your role is to present the impact it’s having on you; her role is to figure out what to do about that.

(If she were the one writing to me, obviously the advice would be different. In the U.S., she could definitely tell him that breaks of X minutes or longer count as his break … and she could also explore the question of whether he can do the job at all if he’s regularly missing that much of a four-hour shift. He very well may have a medical need that he needs to pursue formal accommodations for, and part of that process would be assessing how much of the shift he can reasonably be absent for.)

2. Should I fire someone over email?

I run a small nonprofit animal sanctuary. We are in an at-will employment state. In August, we hired a part-time employee for 16-20 hours per week. Her interview went great, her references were stellar, and her probationary employment period was perfect. Everyone was excited to have her on the team, and we invested a lot of time into her training.

The very day after her probationary period ended (which consisted of a meeting that went well and a 10% raise from the hourly wage she was hired at), she changed. She is now creating a toxic workplace for others, going behind her manager’s back to get to me (the executive director) after her manager has already answered her questions, talks back to team members, completely ignores our process/notes/training, and is not completing the job she was hired for. I am confident I will need to terminate her.

My own mentor has always coached me through terminations in cases like this to pull the person aside at their next shift, have a brief meeting with a well-written script, and then let them go for the day with full pay for the hours they would have worked that week. We always follow up with an email to recap the meeting and confirm the termination.

Here is where it gets tricky: She lives about 45 minutes away and doesn’t have a car. Her mom drives her to work and picks her up, and we allowed for her schedule to start with hours that would align with her mother’s availability to give her a ride. I don’t feel like it’s fair to have her arrive to work (her mom then leaves) and then have her here all day. Nor do I feel like it makes sense to have her here all day and then terminate her right before she leaves, because I can’t guarantee exactly when her mom would show up, and I don’t trust her alone. It also feels crappy to expect her mom (who works) to turn around and drive another 90 minutes round-trip to pick her up after she is terminated. I also don’t feel it will work to give her a heads-up that I want to meet with her, and have her mom “hang out.”

Do you think I can terminate her over email in this instance? I did google it and it’s not illegal to do so. The only warning is that whatever you write can be used against you if they file wrongful termination. I have all things very well-documented. This termination should not come as a surprise to her based on the meetings, emails, texts, and conversations we have had over the last 90 days, honestly, although I’m certain she will say it will.

Email is not a good idea because you won’t know for certain that she’s seen it; some people don’t check email for days.

This is what phone calls are for! Call her and do it over the phone. If you get voicemail, leave a message telling her that you need to talk with her as soon as possible and to call you back. Then follow up with a text reiterating that you need her to call you.

If she doesn’t call you back and just shows up for her next shift anyway, would you consider paying for her transportation home immediately afterward? Covering the cost of a ride service would be a reasonable investment in making this go smoothly.

Related:
can I fire an employee by phone or email?

3. My hourly coworker was working overtime but not reporting it

I had a coworker a while back, when I was hired in a professional role and they were admin support at a small company. I was not their supervisor and not in a managerial role in any capacity. They mentioned a few times in passing that they had been getting increasing responsibilities that they weren’t able to complete in their regular hours and so they were working late and on weekends. One day they made it clear that they were not being forthcoming with their supervisor about the extra time it was taking to complete their work because management had already made it clear that they should be able to complete it on time. I recommended they try to talk to their manager again, but they were worried the company would rather hire someone more efficient instead of paying them overtime or working with them to find another solution. They were close-ish to retirement age, able to work a lot from home, and found an identity in that job so they didn’t love the idea of looking for another one.

Based on my observations at the time, the employee’s concerns about being replaced seemed plausible enough and so I felt like they were in a really tough situation. What advice might you give to someone who is essentially hiding their overtime to avoid the risk of losing their job? I’m also curious if you think I had an obligation to disclose any of this. I never said anything because I didn’t want to put my coworker’s job in jeopardy and I didn’t think the company was actually doing anything illegal since they weren’t aware of the overtime hours. But I’m curious about how I could or should have handled it.

We had a letter last year from someone who was in a position similar to your coworker’s; they found they needed to work longer hours than colleagues did to complete the same amount of work and were wondering why they couldn’t opt out of overtime pay so that their company would be more likely to be okay with it. I don’t know if that was your coworker’s situation or whether the problem was an unreasonable workload, but if it’s the former it’s a tough position to be in and I can understand why your coworker landed where she did, even if it’s not a good long-term plan. (The unreasonable workload situation is tough too, but there are at least more ways to try to resolve that.)

If you weren’t in a management role, you had no obligation to say anything — and you were right not to, since you could have gotten your coworker fired for something that really wasn’t your business. If you were a manager, that would have been different; then you’d have an obligation to speak up, because your coworker was creating a legal liability for your company (even though they weren’t aware of the overtime).

4. How should I tell interviewers I’m leaving my job because my boss hates women?

I work in a very female-dominated profession and am a woman. I joined this team two years ago; my supervisor is a man, and most of the team at his level is split between men and women, most of the team at my level is women, and the director of our unit is a woman. I knew the team from working a contract here previously, I had actually golfed with this guy, and had no problem with him. After working with him for the last two years, I do have a problem with him — multiple problems, that have made me decide to start job hunting so I can get out before he damages my career, reputation, and love for this work further.

I’m fairly certain I can get a good reference from other people in my department, but won’t be asking my boss to be a reference because I hadn’t worked with him for very long before I came to understand he despises women. On paper, this is a great team, job and paycheck, and I know when I inevitably interview multiple people will ask why I’m leaving when my job is so great. How do I answer that? That I’m leaving because my boss didn’t train me, made fun of me during my first day for not doing as well as I should have, “considering the time I took” on the applicant skills test when I was interviewing, micromanaged me, deliberately scored me low on performance evaluations, gave my projects and work to the only man on our team because he likes him better, and made it clear that this was because he hates women and doesn’t think they should work at my level? What do I say in my cover letter?

My instinct is to go for blunt honesty, but I’m afraid of being asked why I didn’t grieve his behavior with my union or go to the director (I did both, for different events, and was told I was making a big deal out of nothing and I could let it go or go into mediation with him, but nothing was going to happen).

You shouldn’t get into any of that. You’re not required to open your heart up to interviewers and tell them all your innermost thoughts, regardless of what they ask. You’re allowed to come with a professional answer that doesn’t require you to badmouth your boss (even though that badmouthing sounds quite deserved), because badmouthing your boss is often considered an interview faux pas and you don’t want to set yourself up to be penalized for being honest. Instead, come up with a more boring answer.

Since you’ve been there two years, you can simply say, “I’ve been here two years and I’ve enjoyed the work, but I’m really interested in this position because ___.” In other words, talk about why the job you’re interviewing for appeals to you, not why you’re trying to leave your current job.

More here:
how do I tell interviewers why I’m leaving my job without badmouthing my employer?

5. Is this a demotion?

Less than a year ago, I started working at a great company. I really like the person I was reporting to (who is a director). My job description had a manager title (I did not manage people) and called for 7-10 years of experience. I have almost 20 years of experience doing this work.

Due to a re-org, I was just moved to a newly-created team with a first-time manager who is one or two levels down from director. The job description is slightly different which is fine, but I noticed that it calls for 3-5 years of experience.

I’m told my pay and pay grade are not changing, but I can’t help but feel like this is kind of a demotion. I still have “manager” in my title but it seems like they just did that because it was in my last title. (I’m still not managing anyone and in fact, where before I was a one-person team, I’m now part of a multi-person team.) The others on the team are much less experienced than I am and are at more of an associate level. (The manager has less experience as well but has been with the company for several years, it being their first post-college job.)

I’m wondering if this will affect my ability to get raises, since I may be getting paid more than this role would have paid if I hadn’t been moved into it, or even that they might look to replace me with someone who would get a lower salary.

I’m curious if you think these concerns are valid. I don’t want to leave this company and don’t plan to make any changes any time soon, but I am wondering if my concerns are legit.

Yes, those are legitimate concerns, particularly the one about not getting raises if they normally wouldn’t pay you this much but did just so they wouldn’t be giving you a pay cut. It’s less likely that they’re going to try to replace you with someone lower paid or else they probably would have just cut your position to begin with … but it’s possible and you’re right to have it on your radar.
But I’m also curious about whether the new job is the same role as the other, less experienced people on your team are in. It’s possible that your new job is one that requires and make use of your higher experience level, in which case I’d be less concerned than if you’re all doing more or less the same work.

The post coworker spends too long in the bathroom, should I fire someone by email, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.

https://www.askamanager.org/2026/01/coworker-spends-too-long-in-the-bathroom-should-i-fire-someone-by-email-and-more.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=35048