How to handle a tardy colleague?

That’s what one reader asked recently on the Admin Pro Forum: “There’s a member of our four-person admin team who does everything well and is very nice, but she is just never at work on time. Five minutes here, 10 minutes there, occasionally 15 … maybe it’s not a big deal because it’s not difficult to catch up over the course of an eight-hour day. But I worry about the example this sets, and I get irritated when I have a question and need to wait for an answer. Do you think this behavior is too minor to risk alienating someone who does a good job by mentioning it? I’m not her supervisor, just a colleague.” —Susan, reservations agent

Experts offered their take on the issue.

Address the situation if it affects your work. “If you don’t, your anger will keep building and building until you come unhinged at a minor act,” says Karla Brandau, an executive coach and CEO of Workplace Power Institute.

If you choose to discuss it directly with your colleague, explain how their tardiness affects your daily work. Say something like “When you’re late, it causes me to (fill in the blank),” and ask if there’s anything you can do to help them be on time, Brandau says.

Beware that confronting them may backfire. If they ignore your complaint about tardiness and you later go to your boss about it, you could be setting up a hostile work relationship, says Roy Cohen, career coach and author of “The Wall Street Professional’s Survival Guide.” “When you have a gripe with a co-worker, it is never your responsibility to set or enforce the rules,” he says. As a peer you don’t have the authority to monitor or criticize others’ behavior, he says.

Depending on your relationships with your boss and your colleague, you may want to go to your boss first. “Explain that you feel uncomfortable having this conversation, but you wanted to make sure that being late repeatedly was not accepted,” Cohen says. Tell them you’re concerned that your co-worker may be taking advantage of those who show up on time, he says.

If their tardiness doesn’t affect your work, let it go. Take care to monitor the negative emotions you feel about their lateness, and consciously discard those feelings, Brandau says.