Twice a week we publish problems that will feature in a forthcoming Dear Jeremy advice column in the Saturday Guardian so that readers can offer their own advice and suggestions. We then print the best of your comments alongside Jeremy’s own insights. Here is the latest dilemma – what are your thoughts?
A colleague spends his time working on personal code projects at work delaying doing the work he should be doing. We work in two-month cycles and throughout the cycle he can spend from 30 minutes to hours a day doing his own projects.
Our team leader has left so we are down one person in a small team with a lot of work coming up. The outgoing team leader, who I am friendly with, mentioned that he regarded the colleague as lazy and didn’t trust him with important work. I’m not sure what the new team leader thinks but I think the colleague manages perceptions of himself very well. He has even put the company logo on his personal work so that it looks like he is working.
We all have to work harder which is undesirable due to the additional stress of having too much work. It annoys me because he is getting an easy ride at our expense, and also because he’s spending his time learning new technologies which we’d all like to be doing. This is experimentation we have to do outside of work, so I can see his motivation.
I am not sure how to handle this, I feel as if telling on him is bad form, but I get really annoyed with him doing it. What should I do?
Do you need advice on a work issue? For Jeremy’s and readers’ help, send a brief email to dear.jeremy@theguardian.com. Please note that he is unable to answer questions of a legal nature or to reply personally.
