My [27F] boss [40ishF] will not leave me alone at work (constantly wants to chat about reality shows and personal stuff) and WILL NOT LEAVE MY OFFICE. It’s seriously interrupting my productivity. How do I politely tell her to leave me alone?

I don’t want to give away details of my job, for obvious reasons, but here’s the gist— I’m in a mid-level position at an agency that basically solves big problems for companies. Half of my role involves traveling and serving as a consultant for clients, but the other half involves a lot of software engineering and development. That part must take place in our corporate office, as our agency is very strict about liability and intellectual property. We’re not allowed to take company work or technology home.

So, the time that I am able to spend in the office is crucial, because that’s when I actually craft the products and systems for our clients. But my boss won’t freaking leave me alone.

She’s been around for years but the more time goes by, the less she seems to do. Constantly she laments about having no tasks to do (when our line of work is literally finding tasks and then doing them but that’s none of my business). Her solution to her boredom, it seems, is to come sit in my office and chat for hours about personal stuff and pop culture.

I’ll politely refocus my attention on my computer and make it clear that I’m in the middle of emailing someone or coding something, but she just ignores that and keeps talking. I’ve even developed a system with my assistant where she’ll notice our boss has been in my office for awhile and will then nudge someone on my team to come ask me a question, usually prompting our boss to leave.

Sometimes I’ll gently say something like, “Well, I’d better get back to [...]” and on occasion she’ll take the hint, but sometimes she’ll ignore me and keep talking, or she’ll say, “Oh, that should only take a few minutes.”

Not only is she sucking up hours of valuable time, she also seems to be implying with her behavior that I also have nothing to do, or lack the initiative to create my own work. Half of her team is also constantly complaining about the lack of work— it seems like I do enough for all of us, and it’s frustrating. But I have an amazing relationship with our clients and I love the work itself, so I don’t want to leave. What do I do?

TLDR: Boss has very few daily tasks and so she insists on taking up hours of my day chatting, distracting me from important projects

Submitted October 25, 2019 at 10:56AM by spoopyhsbsbbs https://ift.tt/32MLReV