My coworker takes 2-hour lunches and leaves me all the work—today I snapped
I share a desk with "Mike." He's been here 4 years. I've been here 8 months. We're supposed to split the workload 50/50.
Reality? More like 90/10. Me being the 90.
Mike takes 2-hour lunches. Every single day. Comes back with Starbucks, chats with everyone, takes a "quick" 30-minute phone call, then spends an hour "researching" (scrolling Twitter). Meanwhile, I'm drowning in tickets, client emails, and deadline after deadline.
I've mentioned it to my boss twice. Both times, she said "just communicate better with him."
So I did. I sent Mike a calm email with a spreadsheet showing exactly how much each of us did last month. I was at 78 tasks. He was at 22. I asked if we could rebalance.
He replied: "I work faster than you. It's not my fault you're slow."
I saw red.
Today, Mike left for lunch at 11:30. At 1:45, still not back. I had 3 urgent client requests and a report due at 2 PM. I couldn't do it all. So I stopped.
I sent an email to my boss—cc'ing Mike—with screenshots of the workload, the timestamps of his lunch "breaks," and a simple question:
"Which of these 3 client requests should I drop? Or should I wait until Mike gets back from his 2-hour lunch to decide?"
I attached the spreadsheet again.
My boss replied in 4 minutes: "Mike, come to my office when you're back. [My name], drop the lowest-priority request. I'll handle the rest."
Mike came back at 2:10. Saw the email. Didn't say a word. Just walked straight to my boss's office.
He came out 20 minutes later looking deflated.
Today was the first day he took a 45-minute lunch.
Maybe there's hope after all.