Oct 11 2008
Co-worker is grossly overweight?
Question:
“You work with someone who is grossly overweight, they do not dress to cover themselves appropriately … nor do they don’t have a friendly personality.
It is really unpleasant to see the person and you can’t avoid them either. Your employer doesn’t seem to want to “rock the boat” by saying something to them about the dress code. What would you do?”
-Anonymous
Answers:
“Get a new job. 
”
— Gritty Gossiper: Writer’s Cramp
“I see options for this situation, depending on your nature, mostly:
1. Seek employment elsewhere. If you’re good at your job, you shouldn’t have to deal with a hostile work environment, and I think this would qualify as hostile, especially since working there too long in those conditions could drive you to want to shoot somebody. Also, let your boss know you’re looking for a job in which such a condition doesn’t exist. By ‘not rocking the boat’, he’s basically not helping a potentially bad situation. There are ways employers can deal with such situations with tact and respect, which should allow for you to enjoy your job and not have to tolerate such things. A good boss would know how to approach the situation and handle it with minimal ‘boat rocking’. There are many obese people in the world, but adding to it a tight wardrobe and a bad attitude, could indicate a more serious problem that, if overlooked, could cause trouble for the business and all concerned.
2. Get to know this person better. Find out, if you can, in a very careful way, why they’re fat, wearing clothes sizes too small, and hate everyone. Honestly, all 3 of these issues could be caused by the same thing — depression. If a person is depressed, they can have mood swings and binge eat as a way of dealing with their problems. Obviously, without exercise, they’ll grow larger, and then no longer fit in their cloths so well. This certainly won’t help their mood, and they will not want to buy larger clothes because they’re still hoping to get over it and lose the weight again. In any case, dealing with an individual with these defining characteristics is a sensitive issue and flogging them into walking the plank and feeding them to the sharks is probably not the answer. Seriously, though, there is hope in dealing with a person like this. They just need to re-establish their balance and become once again comfortable with who they are.”
— Gritty Gossiper: Boss Pirate
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