I have a co-worker that I am having a very difficult time dealing with. She is an older lady (around 55, I’m guessing), and she has a very strong personality. She doesn’t like her job, the company, or our supervisor, and she is most often in a bad mood, but she won’t quit this job, so I’m stuck with her while we both work there.
My job requires that I work with her; she does part of it, I do the other. The problem I’m having is that she screws up quite frequently, and having a bad nature and bad temper, she takes her anger out on me. When I come to her with an error of hers that I have caught, she gets mad at me. When I don’t try to catch her errors, they reflect on my work and make it look like I’m missing things.
I have talked to our supervisor about her errors and her anger problem, but our supervisor doesn’t think it’s a serious problem. She thinks I need to stand up to hostile co-worker (HCW), and that should fix things. Problem is, I’m non-confrontational by nature, and I really don’t want to create a situation where HCW and I are arguing with each other every day. And I have stood up to HCW - I do it all the time. She justs gets angrier at me, and she obviously has a much bigger capacity to get angry than I do. Also, the supervisor tells HCW everything I tell her - making her even more hostile towards me. This is a small company, and there is no HR department. After my supervisor is the owner of the company, and I’m not quite ready to take it to that level yet.
I don’t see a solution to this; her personality isn’t going to change, and neither is mine. We will always be oil and water. I’ve been mostly letting her hostility roll off my back for over a year now, but I’m getting fed up. HCW is not going to be let go - she does a job that no one else can do at the moment. I’m getting promoted - I don’t really want to quit this company yet, either. My fondest hope is that my promotion will mean not working with this bag anymore, but I haven’t heard anything that makes me think it will, though.
Any suggestions for a non-confrontational person dealing with a hostile bitch at work?
Go to the owner. Your supervisor might not like it, but she isn’t doing her job, either.
How’s your seniority standing? If the HCW has been there longer, you might not get anywhere.
Otherwise, you’ll have to gather up the strength to have a showdown with the cow-orker.
It seems like her anger is affecting your ability to do your job. If the two of you can’t work it out, you need help from someone else. Whether that someone is your supervisor (which doesn’t seem like a lot of help from what you’ve said) or someone else doesn’t matter as long as the issue gets resolved. Is there a third person who you might be able to take it to before going to the company owner?
She might appreciate it if you take the extra effort of finding another coworker to try to act as a mediator before you go to the owner. (Then again, she might not <shrug>.)
I wish you luck!
There’s a book out that addresses JUST this problem I think the title is “How to deal with hostile people” (or something along those lines.
Gosh what a miserable situation.
If she makes errors, rather than you having to “fix” them, or watch out for them, if it were ME in the same situation, I’d be dropping them back on her desk DRIPPING with red ink, and saying sweetly “oh, you missed this, let me know when you’re done fixing it and I’ll turn them in with mine” (or whatever fits in with your actual situation, and then go back to your own office or area before she can spew your poison.
“Killing with Kindness” always seems to work best for me. Gosh, again, what an icky situation to be in, I hope it gets better!!
Set up mediation. What I mean by that is that the two of you should have a discussion about your issues with either your supervisor or the owner acting as a referee. Come out of that meeting with a contract on how you will both behave towards one another.
Don’t say or do anything that will put your promotion at risk. Perhaps you will not have to work with the HCW and this turmoil will become moot. If you still have to work with her, there are a few things you can do, but it may not be nice.
First, learn what makes her skills so unique there and see if you or another employee can do it too. You pretty much have to devise an exit strategy for your supervisor to follow. Because you then have to document, tactfully, every mistake HCW makes and how much time and money it costs. Essentially you will have to build a case for canning her.
If you are feeling really nasty you can begin to sabotage her work, spread rumors, all that dirty stuff. I know it sounds bad but this approach works quite well for lots of people (not me) in the work environment.
Another approach, and it worked for me a couple of years ago, is to take her out to lunch and just lay out for her your perceived problems and, most importantly, how different the consequences are for each of you. Stress that you want to build a career, that (I’m assuming) you are younger and have a future ahead of you etc. Be polite, but assertive and very straight. See how she responds, but try not to argue. If this fails, I would consider initiating a cold war.
No one likes having a nemesis at work, but it happens often enough and can allow some learning opportunities. If your career brings you to larger companies, you will see that folks can be less in your face with their hostility, but ultimately play a more cunning game–so dealing with HCW may pale by comparison some day.
I think you are going about this all wrong. Kill her with kindness. Make a real effort to honestly try to be her friend. You aren’t going to change her but you can maybe get her to be a little nicer to you. That is the advice I always give and I know it is hard to do but if you can do it, it is a win win situation. You show your management you can improve the situation an rise above it and you get the lady to be more pleasant.
Her anger is totally affecting my ability to do my job. I agonize over trying to figure out the best way to approach her with something that she has to do for me so I can get on with my duties, because if I approach her just a tad off, she’ll go off on me.
I’ve stopped doing parts of my job because I just can’t take her always getting angry with me for just doing my job.
HCW has seniority over me, and is also doing a job that no one in the company can replace her with (it takes a lot of specialized knowledge). I’m a file clerk - I’m damned good at my job, but I can easily be replaced.
I was just thinking about this (cause it’s hard to think of anything else when you have a mess like this at work) - if she were my boyfriend, I wouldn’t put up with this. I feel like I’m walking on eggshells around her so that I don’t set her off - kinda reminds me of an abusive relationship I had way back when. Is what she’s doing actually abuse?
I’m another one who suggests a mediator. But instead of the boss or owner, who might be biased, have them hire one from a company that does mediating as a profession. Companies in your province may have to take this route by law. Check that out. The mediator isn’t there to tell you what to do but may submit a report of what transpired so that your superiors can see this situation from the point of view of someone who has nothing at stake.
You are probably not unionized but if you are, you can also take your concerns to your steward. I know they tend to take employee conflicts seriously.
It’s not fair that you have to keep cleaning up her sloppiness. I hope something is resolved soon.
Yes it is abuse. You can sue for hostile work environment but have to go thru proper procedures. I think you are at a disadvantage. I had a person like this and it was killing me. One day I brought her a single rose in a vase. I told her I really wanted to be her friend. It killed me to do it but it worked. She was ashamed to me mean to me after that.
Your supervisor should have handled the situation. Now, go to HR and tell them of this hostile work enviroment. Use those words, everyone in HR knows what they mean. This could actionable (HR will also be familiar with THAT word). This really is lawsuit material. They should want to step in before it comes to that.
BTW, nobody in any company is irreplacable. Nobody. Everybody can be replaced, even if there is a little chaos in the meantime.
No job is worth that kind of crap. But if you must stay, the next time she raises her voice to you, look her dead in the eye and firmly say, “I hope you’re not raising your voice to me! I hope you don’t think it’s OK to talk to me in that tone! If you have a problem with me, take it up with my supervisor. Or I will.” Don’t flinch, don’t back off, and don’t raise your voice. Then follow through. Fuck them. Take your pseudo-supervisor to court if you have to.
I think I will start saying to her “It sounds like you’re mad at me.” when she starts up with the hostile attitude. She’s not a bad person, and I truly don’t think she knows how hard to work with she it, so I hope this might jolt her into realizing that snapping at co-workers is not appreciated. Otherwise, I’ve updated my resume and will start shopping it around next week.
I wouldn’t say “It sounds like you’re mad at me.” That sounds a little…unprofessional - that’s something that you could say to a friend, not the HCW. That would probably set her off even more.
I would say instead, “Is something wrong? I’m sensing that you’re frustrated with x or y, can you help me understand why you’re frustrated?” You need to shift the focus back onto her in a constructive and non-confrontational way, in a way that gets her to try to verbalize he anger, but (probably) without her realizing it. Also, see how she responds to this tactic. She might be a little thrown off, maybe enough to actually say something to help you understand where she’s coming from. Or, she could continue being the HCW, and become even more hostile, of which you should also take note. Note all of it.
As much as she IS hurtng your feelings, try to keep it focused on the affect that it is having on your WORK. As others have said above, document, document, document. After a week of trying the above approach, see if there is a change. Meet with your supervisor, and discuss the results. If you tried the above and there was no positive change, then inform your supervisor that you want a meeting with her, the HCW, and yourself. Go over the situation, and give it another two weeks.
If your supervisor is not amenable to that, or if she is and then there is still no change, then it’s time to leapfrog. Go right to the owner, bring your documentation, and leave it to the owner to make the call. Your meeting with the owner should be one on one.
And - also, as people above have said - don’t ttake this type of shit. But, try to resolve it in a professional way - DO NOT sabotage her. You’ll be shooting yourself in the foot.
I’m having a similar problem with a cow-orker. I won’t go into all the details; suffice to say, her attitude is not warranted. I’ll just tell you what I plan to do.
Mr. Rilch warned me not to phrase anything in the form of a question, like “Why are you yelling at me?” because that will just be a springboard for her to go off on me some more. Friend warned me further not to make a long speech, on the grounds that if someone already believes that they’re always right and you’re always wrong, they’re not going to listen to more than a word or two.
So, after rehearsing various responses and trying to make them one-size-fits-all, addressing her attitude rather than the specific incident, I settled on this:
“That’s rude.”
Short and to the point. I’ll let you know how it goes.
feather… as a not-quite-ready-for-corporate-north-American, I shudder in dismay and sympathise with you, but I have a suggestion too… You did mention that you aren’t exactly the confrontational type, but there are some people that don’t respond to anything other than commands.
I’m assuming the company doesn’t really have a regimented hierarchy, but, well, have you tried just saying “I need you to have this done/do this”?
You’d be amazed what some people will do if its laid out for them clearly- often without complaint.
I have worked with just about every size, shape and form of assholes at work. Luckily I moved on to new jobs before I joined their club. The type of asshole you are dealing with seems to be the type that is threatened by your existence. That is, you work very close to her so you might just be able to do her job some day, big threat there. So she keeps the stress level high on you hoping you will quit and then they have to start all over with someone green on the job, it works right into her hand. Maybe just a subtle hint or two that you aren’t interested in her job would help?
