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I work in a small team in a smallish company. Every so often, one particular member of the team will say they will do something (typically unrelated to our job such as buying a card for someone who is leaving, or moving used mugs from her desk to the dishwasher, etc.) but a week later, this task will still not be completed.

I try to remind them to do these tasks with phrases such as:

Are you getting X, or shall I just buy it?

But such phrases are normally shot down with:

Don't buy it. Also work on your people skills and be less rude.

or

Yeah, I'll do it in a bit

How do I remind them to do these tasks without coming across as rude, impatient, or passive aggressive?

Also, I found this question, which is similar, but I think only really applies to a closer type of relationship.

are you getting X or shall I just buy it?

I think your coworker may have been rubbed the wrong way by this as she could interpret it negatively in numerous ways:

1. I'm being accused of not doing my task


2. I'm being accused of being forgetful


3. This person thinks they're better than me because they think I need help with something so simple


4. This person has more time on their hands than me and I resent that

We can't control what other people think but to prevent assumptions, we can define more of our intent and reason(s) for inquiring:

Hey, did you get a card yet? Just want to make sure we get one in time before (person) leaves.


Would you be able to move the mugs to the dishwasher sometime today?

Generally it sounds more polite if you frame your request to look like a favor.

You can also pose a rhetorical question or casual comment depending on your dynamic and her sense of humor to act as a reminder:

I didn't know we had so many mugs

Are these mugs multiplying?

Where are these mugs coming from?

Should we try to be discreet when signing the card?

Wouldn't it be funny if someone just wrote "Happy birthday" in the card?

If she continues to avoid doing the tasks I would avoid intervening if the tasks are small and personal to her (not moving her mugs, her desire to get a card for someone leaving, etc.)

Have you tried putting a deadline on the task, either explicitly or implicitly? Instead of saying "Will you buy a card for someone?", try saying "Will you pick up a card for coworker by Friday?

It sets the expectation that you expect the task will be done in a certain amount of time, instead of leaving it open-ended. It's less ambiguous.

Story time:

I have used this technique many times in work situations. As a developer, I frequently service requests from non-technical end-users. i.e. "can you add feature X to the application". Once the work is done, I would let them know "hey, I have added it, can you go test it out in Development and let me know if its working for you?" What would happen is I would never get any feedback and/or they would never test the feature. The feature would end up getting pushed to production anyway. To compound matters, they would come back to me weeks and months later saying "feature X didn't work."

In this case, I'm required to have them complete their task, because I can't do it for them. Only they can tell me if the feature is working as they expect.

So, what I started doing is saying things like "hey, feature X is completed. It needs to be tested by Friday or we'll assume you are signing off on it." When I started doing this, I noticed that they would start marking the "due date" in their calendars or otherwise getting back to me fairly quickly, often the same day or the next.

By setting an arbitrary deadline, you are communicating, in no uncertain terms, the time frame in which you expect this task to be completed. In my case, I was also able to communicate the consequence of NOT completing the task within that time frame, which was they would be signing of on something they hadn't tested or even looked at.