"Communication Issues"

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I was called into my boss' office at the beginning of my shift to discuss what he saw as possible "communication issues" between me and my office mate. He said there had been some complaints. I had a chance to speak with her (yes, I was calm) but she denied talking to our boss about this.

In the course of the conversation, though, she did tell me that she didn't feel that the two of us had "gelled" and that we weren't really working as a team. I'm a little mystified. We copy each other on almost every email that goes through our area related to business so that we both know what's going on. We work overlapping shifts so we give each other a quick briefing on the days' occurances at that time, or leave an email if there's something the other needs to know about. Our process seems to work well enough that there are no significant slow-downs due to our area. The process could stand some improvement, of course, but we're operating in a half-paper/ half-digital environment and all the suggestions we've made for increasing the digital portion in order to improve work-flow have been shot down as too expensive or difficult to develop, so we're basically stuck with what we've got. There are a series of spreadsheets that bridge the gaps between the two halves of the process and we both update them regularly.

I'm not sure how to proceed from here. I've told her to let me know if there are specific things she thinks need to be addressed, but it's all kind of vague from her end. Has anyone else had this sort of experience? Am I overlooking something that could help?

Regards,

Patricia

Story of my life, and I haven't found a solution.
The problem is that they don't know what they want.
Maybe you're just not warm and fuzzy enough. Or maybe you fail to respond properly to sick jokes that aren't funny.
If I make a tangible mistake that they can name, no matter how trivial, they latch onto it as though it's a federal offense. If I make no mistakes at all, they'll invent stuff. I call it hallucinating.
From what I gather, mentioning Asperger's will only make things worse. I've never tried it.
If you find a useful strategy, I'd love to hear it.

I think it could be she senses you don't want to be girly friends with her. I had a job where there was a lot of gossiping and I was viewed with suspicion because I wasn't interested. Oh, and btw they were men.

Really, when you think about it, it's outrageous that you were called into the office in the first place!

Hi, Patricia. Did the boss tell you what the actual "communication issues" were or what the complaints had been about? At the moment this all sounds very vague. He can't reasonably expect you to change your behaviour if he hasn't told you what you're doing wrong.

If your co-worker has cited your different ways of doing things, that would suggest that she might not like the way you do them. I work with other people and am aware that having a consistent approach to tasks can be important, so maybe the two of you need to sit down together and come to an agreement about how things will be done by BOTH of you so that there are no more misunderstandings.

Another suggestion would be to work on improving the relationship between the two of you. If she is normally a very social person, she may be perceiving you as standoffish. You could perhaps suggest meeting for coffee or you could bring some homemade treat in to share with her, or do some other small thing to establish a bond. These sorts of gestures mean a lot to some people and make them feel more valued as colleagues. Perhaps she feels threatened by your efficiency and thinks that you view her critically- who knows? I really hope things work out for you- no one needs extra stress in the workplace. Jenny

"Gelling" often refers to building a pseudo-friendship relationship.

It is, in my opinion, an unprofessional expectation to place on someone because working well with someone does not require that you show any affection towards them, but that's what separates AS people from NT people.

At my last performance review, my boss told me that I annoy some people. Of course I asked what he meant. Who did I annoy, how did I annoy them, etc. And my boss didnt want to tell me who complained or what they complained about because 'it wasn't important'. But he did give me advice to be more professional in the future.

To be honest I have no idea how I could annoy anybody. I only interact with other people when I am getting an assignment, or handing a completed assignment off to somebody else. But apparently something I did bothers people.

bossses (and especially HR) are caught between 'addressing the issue', and 'avoiding actionable consequences'. They don't want to tell you, in case you go to court with it.

If this is just a 'one-off' complaint, you've tried to communicate, and resolve the issue. Take notes, and keep them available. If it happens again, you have every right to ask for specifics as to the action, or behaviors they're having trouble with, but probably they won't volunteer anything that identifies it with specific people.

good luck.

Thanks to all who have tried to help me sort this out. It's still a bit confusing without specifics to go on. If it comes up again, I'll try to pin them down to specific things they think I can do to help matters. Other things have come up today that may render the whole question moot, anyway. <sigh>

Regards,

Patricia

I work alone on my job and only see clients for the duration of the job. Other people work in teams and I don't think I could tolerate trying to come up with chit chat for that long. In other job situations I usually develop at least a comfortable working relationship if not a friendship after time. Sometimes co workers tell me they were afraid to approach me at first. I must be sending off vibes.