Is OTHER wrong in the post ? POST : I work in an office at a hospital doing research for a doctor (we’ll call him boss) there is another doctor that handles clinical research (calling him the man). The man also has his team of clinical researchers who are in med school. There is this college student (calling him Stu) who comes by once a week to help menial tasks. Stu actually works for the man, I do not work for the man but we work in the same department and speak often (good guy), somehow Stu ended up with me to do work. So I give him his assignment each week if we have any usually basic data entry stuff. I am just a guy supervising him that hands him the assignment and tells him how to do it. I have no firing ability or anything like that. 

The man apparently told Stu that if there’s nothing for me to give him then he can just study on company time… Also sidenote, Stu’s father is a doctor at a different hospital but is in the same field as my department, Stu’s two older brothers have also gone through the med school and are involved with my department at my hospital. So Stu is a legacy with med school aspirations.  

So I have been working with Stu for about 8-10 months now and I have already formed my opinion on this dude. When he first started working with me he did fine and would complete his tasks. I had a new assignment that I needed him to complete basically setting up a research database. It was a lot of work but it would keep him busy. He was good about doing this for several weeks maybe a month then I noticed this thing is not getting done. Toward the end of the semester I noticed that he is pretty slack in that he is usually late or sometimes just doesn’t show up at all. 

So he never finished his assignment and my boss was starting to ask for this to be done. Bossman was aware that Stu hasn’t been the best about things. I ended up having to take over the assignment as well as get another researcher involved to get this done. My opinion is that Stu’s college education comes first but when he’s here he needs to do the assignments I hand him first. If he can’t show up to my work then go do something else. So he’s failed my test at this point. 

He goes home for the summer and I wanted to see more out of him this fall semester. When he came back for the fall semester I spoke with him and said what day/time works best for you? He says Friday at 2 pm. Great, this is the time I expect you to be here every week! I hand him another assignment, simpler and less work for him. Basically he’s not getting much work from me unless he can prove himself or boss tells me to give him more. Things were fine in the beginning, I didn’t have much work for him but it’s been picking up the last month or two. Almost every week he texts him and asks if he can come in…. Yes dude come in. Ok I can be there at 2. Yes dude, we agreed to this time. Almost without fail, 2 pm rolls around and he is always late by 10-15 mins. That’s fine, just glad you showed up and I hand him his assignment. Some weeks he does not bother to text me to let me know he is not coming in that Friday. Some days he comes in at 3. Whenever he’s here, he almost does the bare ass minimum that I ask of him. 

Yesterday, Stu has been missing for several weeks and I never contact him to ask where he is anytime he does this….If he wants to be here and work he can contact me because I don’t really need this guy. I feel like I have to babysit this guy and this guy can’t show up on time. He texts me yesterday (Friday) saying “hey can I come in.” Me: Yes come in. Stu: I’ll be there at 3. Me: Ok but I’m leaving at 3:30. 

3 rolls around and there’s no sign of Stu. At 3:15 he shows up. I walk him over to where he can work in our conference room and there is a meeting going on in there. At this point, I think to myself he’s late, I don’t have a way for him to get setup, and I’m leaving in 15 minutes. I don’t want to go overtime and set this guy up even though he’s the one who caused this situation. Frustrated, I finally just say man I can’t get you going today, I’m leaving in 15 minutes. You have got to start showing up earlier at 2 like we agreed upon in order for me to get you setup. He understood and said he’d be here at 2 pm on Monday so I left it at that. 

The thing is he uses my login info to look up patient records in order to do the work. I didn’t want to log him in to everything that’s in my name and then clock out 15 minutes later, leaving him with all of my info.  When my boss and I met regarding this arrangement, he asked if I was cool with him using my info (not really) but I didn’t want to create an issue. 

So am I being the asshole for not getting Stu setup with work? I think he’s an alright guy but when it comes to getting things done as well as being professional, he fucking sucks…. I feel like I have given this guy chances but he just doesn’t seem to get how this job works with me. I simply cannot depend on this guy. Most of the time when you have a job you are supposed to show up at a certain time and if you don’t show up typically you get fired. 

I feel trapped because I can’t go to the man and say this guy sucks I don’t want him. I also can’t get rid of this guy which if it were up to me I would have done so. Maybe I need to do a better job of communicating to him my expectations.    

So am I being an asshole? How can I best handle this? I am trying to protect my ass and keep my job so I cannot screw this up. I feel like I should talk to my boss about this but I don’t want to create an issue even though Stu is the one who has created this. How can I do better and how can I do a better job of managing this guy? I’ve never had to manage a guy and I didn’t think it would be this difficult especially in a professional environment but then he’s a college kid who just turned 21 last week… I fail to understand why he fails to do this other than he is not interested in this. I’m 25 so I’m not that much older than this guy…. Any advice would be helpful or tell me if I’m the asshole! 

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TL;DR

I have a guy that I supervise who fails to show up at the agreed time on Fridays. In short he is pretty slack in my opinion and I do not have the ability to fire or do anything with this guy other than hand him his assignment. After missing for several weeks, he texts me yesterday asking if he can come in. I said yes come in. Great I’ll be there at three. (agreed time was at 2 pm) Ok Stu, I’m leaving at 3:30. He shows up at 3:15 and at this point I’m annoyed because 1. Hes late, 2. I don’t have anywhere to put him 3. I leave in 15 minutes. I tell him dude you’re outta luck today, if you want to get work come in earlier at 2 like we talked about. He understood and said he’d be here at 2 Monday….. Am I the asshole? How can I do better at communicating and managing this guy? First time managing someone else. There’s a good chance he won’t be here Monday because in the past he has said he’ll show up on a random day and then never show…. 

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Thanks for all input! 

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