Some advice for dealing with crazy administrators who are nuts and also don’t do their job

I’m not always good at this, so it’s more of a do what I say, not what I do kind of thing.  But when I do step back and plan ahead and do this, it works pretty well.  Mostly though I don’t have the patience.

Sometimes you have admin who are nutso.  They have weird petty power problems.  Or they’re just lazy and don’t want to do their actual jobs.  (This is different from being incompetent– I have no solution for incompetent administrators.)  This is true for all levels of admin from an administrative assistant 1 to a provost.  Possibly even a president!  (Though provost is the highest level I’ve had to deal with.)

You can’t let them get to you.  You can’t take it personally.

Keep your goal in mind– what is it that you need to get done?  Forget that the admin is a person– as soon as they show that they’re crazy and obstructionist, they’re not really a person.  They’re a cog, or a pawn.  You have to figure out their puzzle to get what it is you want.  Yes, you shouldn’t have to, and you can definitely be angry about that, but don’t let your anger prevent you from getting the thing you need.

First off, is there someone else who can do the thing you need? Yes this is not fair to the other person if it isn’t their actual job, but if the other person who can do it is this person’s boss, then it is kind of fair.

Even if the boss can’t do it, sometimes you need to show a little dominance yourself by ccing their boss in your next email.  Always be polite.  No need to point out that you’ve cc’d the boss.  But as you ask for an update on X or who can help you with X, etc. it sometimes works to have the boss included in the middle of that conversation.  Ignored emails sometimes magically get answered once the right person is cc’d.

Many things that don’t work in email do work if you get the person on the phone or go over to their office in person.  Even if you can’t stand the person, going in and being polite and asking if they can help you (adding a little small talk, admiring something of theirs or asking about kids etc. etc. etc.) will sometimes bring a cranky jerk over to your side.  Yes, I understand that this seems distasteful on one hand or underhanded if you’re just doing it in order to get the person to do their job… but if you can sort of convince yourself that there was some kind of misunderstanding or your emails keep getting lost and if you can just explain in person it will work out (even if in your heart of hearts you know that’s not actually true), sometimes you can superficially get that person to believe that too and you get your thing done.

Sometimes you have to get the horrible person to feel like they can save face.  Assume an important email went to spam (even if you’re pretty sure it didn’t).  You know they’re busy (even if you doubt they are).  Suggest a miscommunication– something wasn’t clear, but it is now.  And so on.

Sometimes you have to provide direct evidence that it was the horrible person’s screw-up and not yours.  Whenever someone is being a bitch about a mistake they made, sometimes you need to politely but firmly point out that uh no, this was actually their fault, not yours.  Most recently for me, this was in the form of forwarding an email to an administrator (not in my department) with the list of people she sent me to invite to an event after she complained (cc’ing her boss) that I had missed someone.  I was like, here’s what you sent me.  (I didn’t cc her boss, because I figured letting her save face was more important than some other department head thinking well of me, but I definitely would have cc’d if it had been my boss.)  She then forgot to ask the same missing faculty member about her lunch order, but fortunately she had asked her boss for a lunch order even though he wasn’t attending the event so I was able to give the faculty member her boss’s order.

Experienced grumpeteers:  How do you handle difficult people at work?