Week 5: Solving Problems
This week was very different in comparison to the other four at my internship. It was a fairly relaxed environment all around the office (even more than usual) with the 4th of July in the middle of the week and a lot of the office chose to work from home throughout the week so it was fairly empty. Some of the bosses commute to Maryland to work on some government projects, so they did that at the start of the week. That being said, there was one young employee in the office (not naming names) that used the bosses being out of the office to their advantage in order to have me run some errands and complete extra work for them. This person also took a much longer lunch break than usual and ended their day very early.
I did not want to be that intern that “told” on another employee, but it felt wrong that this person was getting away with something like this, therefore I decided to address the issue in a relaxed conversation with that individual. On Thursday the 5th, I grabbed lunch with that employee and expressed my belief that it was not cool of said employee to just hand me a bunch of work in order to leave early. The employee recognized their wrongdoing and apologized. They also offered to help me with my remaining work for the day (which was extremely helpful as I had a lot of questions regarding the spreadsheet I was compiling). This issue was resolved in a very professional fashion with two co-workers getting together in order to correctly address a workplace problem.
I understand that this issue of just handing the intern excess work or tasks is commonplace at large corporations, however I am thankful that since Solari is so small and filled with such amazing people that I was able to effectively work out a small problem. I have been so lucky to be with such an amazing group of people the past 5 weeks that this is really the only problem that I have encountered. Any time I have been anxious about using new software or if I am headed in the right direction with my creative ideas, the team has been right there with me. It has truly made me appreciate the positive team culture displayed at Solari, and it has helped me realize that I hope to work for a company that maintains a similar culture to the one at Solari.
Wow, kudos to you for having that conversation; lots of seasoned professionals would shy away from confronting this kind of issue. Also a really good choice to confront the individual personally versus speaking to someone else about the issue, which again, might be the route others (even seasoned professionals) might take. It sounds as though it is indeed a collaborative environment where communication is valued, given the way in which you approached this problem and it was received by the colleague in question. In some ways the actions of your colleagues could be construed as a violation of trust (with the organization, the partners, etc.), but given the way it was resolved – it seems like it was a poor choice during an unusual (holiday) week.