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Embarrassed by my supervisor
I am friends with my immediate supervisor, who answers to our manager. She is a single mom, 40, who dresses and often acts like something the dog drug in. She typically wears wrinkled, faded and baggy clothing, rather unprofessional, and she is the spokesperson for our department. She generally arrives to work late, with wet hair and her hair is cut in a little girl style with heavy bangs and straight to the shoulders - very unflattering. She is overweight and tends to wear shoes (clogs and sandals) that resemble slippers. Moreover, her office is cluttered, dirty, she often has food sitting out, and is decorated with years' old child art, past holiday decorations, cards, photos and lots of knicknacks and old paperwork and even stuffed animals. She basically has no clean space or desktop to work on and she often stacks work on the floor. She is very social, chatting with people to the point of them backing away from her and she often traps people in their work space, cornering them to go on and on about her daughter and television shows ad nauseum. We have spoken with both our manager and directly with her, but things only change minimally and temporarily. She takes pride in not having the money or time to dress appropriately because she is a single mom -- something she mentions anytime anyone else wears something new. Sometimes she is in direct violation of the written and posted dress code, but others also violate this -- however usually with better professional taste. Besides being embarrassed of her, I am also concerned because in many ways she might be promoted to a higher level, if she looked the part and was more professional in her work relationships and environment. What do you recommend? I don't want to go to her again and seem like I am trying to criticize.
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If you were just friends with her, my advice would be different. Your supervisor lacks professional boundaries, so you need to maintain yours even more. It sounds like you already took the appropriate steps in talking to her directly and to her manager. The truth is that you are very critical of her whether or not it seems justified, and she will most likely continue to ignore the unwanted advice or become annoyed with you. Either scenario will not help you or her. Continue to be pleasant, but lose the burden of trying to save her from her tacky self. Concentrate instead on your own professionalism, appearance, and future. Maybe she will eventually look to you for advice, as you maintain a silent witness of work ethics.
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Here's some advice: leave the poor woman the hell alone. She seems like she's happy with the way she is.
♥ Hope I helped.
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I'm gonna guess the lady has so many projects going at once that she has no time for herself.
Could be she needs a friend to help her out.
Unless you or another friend are willing to jump right in there and offer her a complete makeover I don't know how else you can let her know. Her feelings will probably be hurt. There are thrift stores and garage sales that have perfectly good cheap and nice stuff. She probably spends her money keeping her kid presentable.
She is probably tired. Doing a lot at home and then rushing the sleep and getting up and rushing in to work. She needs encouraged to let some things slide at home a little or maybe give daughter some chores to take the load off.
Her desk at work is something you could tackle if your allowed to. Maybe if it was neat she would be encouraged to keep it that way.
She needs taught to be friendly but not to the point of irritation to customers. I think you find a manager above her and have a long talk with them. Tell them you are willing to help and maybe have them be the ones to say something to her. :)
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That's a tough one. I'll throw out some possibilities; maybe one of them will be right for you.
1. Do you have any mutual friends that might want to talk to her about it? Perhaps you could organize a group intervention.
2. If you see her socially, perhaps you (or someone you trust) could take some photographs of her. Those might be useful to show her just how poor her appearance is. Perhaps you could find photos of people in equivalent positions in other companies, or people in higher positions in your company, and point out the differences in appearance.
3. This is a bit crazy, but you could see if you could get her on "What Not To Wear". It's worth a try. She sounds like an ideal candidate! :D
4. Perhaps you could get together with some other friends and get her a gift certificate for a makeover for her birthday - or hire a fashion advisor. But I'd think that would be very expensive.
5. If there's a school of design or fashion near you, you might be able to find students who would like to take her on as a project.
Good luck!
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