I am a caseworker of many, and we are [in theory] supported by several caseworker assistants, who are responsible for undertaking the majority of the administrative tasks that we might set, so that caseworkers can focus on the more difficult tasks.
As part of effective file handling, caseworkers are expected to review files every once in a while to keep them ticking over or closing files.
Now, me being the efficient worker I am [even if I do say so myself], I managed to find the time to set a plethora of admin tasks and put their due date as 1.5 working days.
There is no official guidance from the company as to setting the duration for when a task might be due. Nor js there an expectation / desire to chase that the task is done “on time”. But I consider 1 working day to be reasonable.
Here comes the issue. A certain assistant [worked here a while: experienced, bit of a loud mouth and bulky] sees the task list and finds it in her wisdom to name drop me in a private chat at work involving other assistant colleagues. I come to learn of this from an assistant who I get on well with personally. She shares the screenshots to me.
Messages include:
“Ask XXX [my name] to move on his tasks as we won’t get to them and 30 task in one go is too much!!!”
“I want to and say no he needs to remember SLAs” [service level agreement] “needs to move them on for appropriate time it’s not fair”
“OMG tell XXX [my name] deadline only needs chaser not line by line” [I am unable to decipher what this actually means]
After seeing the screenshots, I was disappointed I was not approached directly by the assistant. We WFH but know each other from the same office. I suggest we have never been more contactable in the WFH era. If you have a problem with me, take it up with me. If she can take time to rant in her own group chat, surely she can invite a dialogue and/or criticise me directly?
I ruminated on the development & decided to inform my manager [who is separate to hers] without mentioning her name, more so that I was perturbed by the conduct of a colleague, and left it to the manager to liaise with the assistants’ manager as appropriate.
I learn the next day the assistant called me out by name in the presence of her assistant colleagues, during a virtual meeting, and she was duly cut off from continuing by her own manager. I was not present at said meeting.
My manager thanked me for raising my concerns, and said she would catch up with me in due course.
I have continued focussing on my work, but I would be lying if I said this hadn’t impacted me mentally. I’m sad I had to call out the behaviour. I’m tired. I’m old, and I work with children.