When is constructive criticism appropriate?

In the work setting, I just leave things be or take it up with my supervisor if it's impacting my work. From my experience, it's always a potential minefield if you call people on their bullshit when you're really in no position to. Like there's a lady I work next to who's literally on the phone all day doing jack shit. Everyone knows it (including her supervisor) but no one will call her on it because she's so politically well connected.

Holy shit. God damn immediately if it has effected timely patient care in the past. And you don't have to be nice about it. Depending on where you work in a hospital you know there are some fairly long stretches of nothing important going on. She can talk all she wants to then, but needs to shut the hell up when something important actually does happen. And needs to be able to tell the difference.

The cryin' equates to crazy - best to leave that shit alone in the future.

cosmic_cs_sl said:

Does her work affect the amount of work you need to do? If so, doesn't it eat you inside to know what she's doing nothing and you have to take the load?

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In a sense, I was hired because I can easily take up her slack without it effecting my own work. She's one of those people that was hired decades ago to do something that has long since been made obsolete by computers. Of course now she's barely literate with computers and pretty incompetent in general so she's given little to do. Her last "big" project took her a year but still needed someone to come in afterwards and clean it up. That same assignment would have taken me no more than a week. She'll do everything manually when the software can easily automate things.

I'd love to see that lady get fired or at the very least humbled. She's a useless individual that has somehow developed quite the ego due to her political connections and how long she's worked there (30 years). She loves giving unsolicited advice for things she literally knows nothing about. I will admit I hate sitting next to her but it can be mildly entertaining sometimes just to see some of the ridiculous drama that she stirs up. Since she doesn't do any real work, she's somehow got her finger in all the drama that happens in the town.

Unsurprisingly where I work is for a local government. The place is poorly run but that slowly seems to be changing. Our particular department has been leaderless and directionless for several years due to politics. The reason that lady can even get away with doing jack shit is that there's frankly not enough to do anyway. We finally got a department head at the beginning of this year so hopefully that'll improve things but I don't intend to stick around to see what happens. Already got a good offer and also don't particularly care to be surrounded by the drama that inevitably follows new leadership.

aychamo_aycono_sl said:

Do it when it's appropriate and do it in a way that does the least offending. Ie, in private, and not in front of anyone else. During my residency training there was some annoying cunt who talked non-stop, and she'd talk about other residents and it made me uncomfortable because I don't talk about people behind their backs, or talk about people period, so I didn't want to be associated with that shit. I just said "It makes me feel uncomfortable when you talk about people, please don't do that when I'm around." I try to frame shit as how I feel, instead of insulting them (ie, instead of "please quit talking about people, it makesyoulook like a retard.") Can't argue with howIfeel!

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This. The whole "I" statement thing is in nearly every book on effective communication. It reduces feelings of antagonism and encourages people to work with you if they are at all inclined to help.

Still though, unless it's necessary, you don't really want to be the douche that's sticking his nose in everyone's business. It also depends on your relationship with the person. Criticism in public tends to be humiliating or uncomfortable regardless of whether or not it's constructive. Telling someone to shut up in a movie theater isn't really criticism and "serious" breaches of etiquette like that deserve a little public pressure and humiliation.

Based only on the information you provided here, what you did was very unprofessional. If someone who worked for me did that, it would be a problem. You shouldn't have confronted her, you should have provided documented evidence to her supervisor to substantiate the impact to customer service, or at the very least talked to the supervisor and make them aware. And you surely should never confront anyone in public like that. This whole "ideal knight" thing and talking about doing what's right doesn't fly, because you were not right in this situation.

My experience in management is dealing mostly with people in their teens and 20s when I worked for Gamestop, very few of my employees were over the age of 30. A few were, but not many. From my experience though, most women can not take constructive work criticism well at all. They take it as a personal attack more often than not. Even if it is something as simple as "I need you to not come back from your break 10 minutes late every day, you're inconveniencing other people and it throws off our entire schedule for the day", they are going to act as if you just personally offended them, you might as well call them fat, you'll get roughly the same reaction.

I'd like to think that this is something they grow out of once past their 20s in general, but I'm not sure that they do. I work in an office now with multiple middle-aged women, and they don't seem to handle it any better at all. I'm going to have to assume that the rare woman who can stay professional in all situations are the ones that are going to work their way up the corporate ladder pretty well, but they are few and far between. I know women have been complaining for years that they don't have the same opportunities for advancement into the higher ranks of companies that men do, but I don't know that it's flat-out gender bias keeping them down, I think it's their own professionalism doing it a lot of the time.

I also don't think it's a reaction to me just being male that they can't handle constructive criticism well, as a DM I had several female managers under me that did really well and were very professional, but more often than not the female employees under them HATED their guts. More than once I had to transfer female employees to different locations because they could not be civil or work at all with female supervisors. I never once in all my years at that job had to transfer a male employee purely because he didn't get along personally with his supervisor/boss.

I'm sure I'm coming off as a chauvinistic jerk here, but that is my experience only spending about 6-7 years in middle management with large numbers of people below me that I had to fire, hire, and evaluate on a regular basis.

edit - to address the original situation in the thread though, you should never be telling someone else how to do their job unless you are their supervisor. If you see something wrong, you have to send it up the chain of command to be dealt with appropriately.

chaos_sl said:

Based only on the information you provided here, what you did was very unprofessional. If someone who worked for me did that, it would be a problem. You shouldn't have confronted her, you should have provided documented evidence to her supervisor to substantiate the impact to customer service, or at the very least talked to the supervisor and make them aware. And you surely should never confront anyone in public like that. This whole "ideal knight" thing and talking about doing what's right doesn't fly, because you were not right in this situation.

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Agree. The three right answers to OP's question are:

1. If the person asks you for it (and this is only situationally applicable depending on the relationship you have with the person)
2. If you are the person's supervisor.
3. If one or two are applicable (and ONLY if 1 or 2 are applicable), only in private, never in public.

Yes its annoying, but you deal. Way too much possibility of it backfiring on you no matter how annoying someone is. Otherwise you report it to the persons supervisor and let them handle it. If they choose not to, then find a way to deal with it or move on. Because if the person in a DIRECT position of handling it can't or won't then you will get nowhere.

In an ideal world, anyone could give polite constructive criticism to anyone, but in this world, some people are going to flip their shit (or perhaps just smolder silently) regardless of how well you word your request, how you approach them, how right you are, how inconsiderate they're being, or how obvious it should be that they ought not be doing what they're doing. Trying to correct someone else, you always run the risk that they'll backlash on you somehow, either in public or in private, immediately or later on. Maybe they'll just spit in your coffee? But in general, the larger and more corporate the company you work for, the more likely that the correct course is just to peacefully speak with their supervisor about the disruptive behavior, as that person is being paid to manage the other employee's emotions and reactions to bad news, not you.

However, as you seem to work in a tight, small group and the management are ineffective with this woman, and because you also mention that she tries to create an "anti-snitching" atmosphere where she can keep acting how she does, I can only say I don't envy you and maybe you or she will win the lottery and never see each other again? In my various warehouse jobs, for example, having an awful coworker was never fixed by talking with them or with management, it was either fixed when they wrecked something expensive with a forklift or when I got myself a change of scenery...

Screw what's "socially acceptable"... this woman is raping your ears. If it's not the brutal truth and straight to her face, then don't bother saying anything.
If she can't handle it..oh well, that's her problem. She'll get over it.
People today are pussies. They don't want to hurt someone elses feelings and instead sugar coat things or "church" it up.
Be blunt!! "Look, you talk way too much and frankly the office is tired of listening to you flap your face." and go on your own way.

Sure, the person may bitch, piss and moan and not like you, but who gives a shit. Sometimes people just NEED to be put in their place, whether by a co-worker, supervisor, friend or whatever.
If they don't like it, doesn't matter. They'll live.

Nostrovia_sl said:

Screw what's "socially acceptable"... this woman is raping your ears. If it's not the brutal truth and straight to her face, then don't bother saying anything.
If she can't handle it..oh well, that's her problem. She'll get over it.
People today are pussies. They don't want to hurt someone elses feelings and instead sugar coat things or "church" it up.
Be blunt!! "Look, you talk way too much and frankly the office is tired of listening to you flap your face." and go on your own way.

Sure, the person may bitch, piss and moan and not like you, but who gives a shit. Sometimes people just NEED to be put in their place, whether by a co-worker, supervisor, friend or whatever.
If they don't like it, doesn't matter. They'll live.

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This is retarded. Being an unprofessional jackass is likely to have professional consequences.