Dear Irritating Ignorant Coworker

The BBQ Pit
1

Listen, I know this has been a crap year for you thus far. First there’s your ongoing I’m-taking-him-to-court drama with your ex who, I agree, has become more than a SOB since the divorce 4 YEARS AGO and now that he has a new family he sees your younger son as nothing more than gum that’s stuck to the bottom of one’s shoe. Second is the drama with said son who ended up spending most of the summer in the hospital with bleeding ulcers and my god HE’S ONLY 13! Which, of course, made you miss work, which means that now you’ve used up all your sick time and you didn’t paid anything after that which means HOW AM I GOING TO PAY THE RENT AND MY HEALTH INSURANCE IF THEY CUT MY HOURS BECAUSE I’M PART TIME? Then you discovered another lump in your breast which you’ve been keeping hush-hush but that doesn’t matter because everybody knows I SURVIVED BREAST CANCER 8 YEARS AGO AND I CAN’T AFFORD TO GO THROUGH THAT AGAIN BECAUSE THAT SOB DIVORCED ME!

But you know what’s crappier than all that? You really want to know? Taking everything out on the rest of us, that’s what. It’s more than your natural bossiness. It’s more than your OCD “Do it MY way” (and you’re not even management!) Hell, it’s even more the way you managed to play each one of us against the other so that you know that anything uttered under any of our breaths is fodder for your never-ending flapping mouth and invisible antennae.

You do not speak. You SHRIEK. You throw things around when you’re upset when you’re not treated like the departmental queen because that means you HAVE to do ACTUAL MENIAL WORK like the rest of us. If you’re not throwing things around, you’re SHRIEKING even more of the unfairness of it all. You SHRIEK when any of us doesn’t do anything the way YOU want it done. You’ve made some of us cry. And yes, you’ve derived benefits from this because nobody in management wants to deal with you, even though you’ve been dragged up there numerous times and written up for your behavior. You wept when the store manager suggested therapy, then you started yet another tirade that he be so arrogant as to even SUGGEST it. Hey but listen, they have a heart. They know the crap you’re dealing with. They don’t want to fire you unless you do or say something so henious that even you wouldn’t even feel the door hitting your ass on the way out.

This doesn’t help those of us who have to put up with you for 8 hours every single day, though. We’ve tried. We’ve given you the benefit of the doubt countless times; we’ve dismissed your behavior time and again because of all this crap you’re going through. You’ve been told to KEEP YOUR PERSONAL LIFE OUT OF THE DEPARTMENT more times than any of us can count, but it obviously doesn’t matter. You don’t see me publicly wailing about my mom’s Alzheimer’s, do you? Or a fellow coworker publicly wailing about her husband’s layoff? Or yet another coworker’s medical problems just as serious as your cancer? We might mention something here and there, but that’s it. No, that’s not enough for you. You don’t even give a shit, but that’s OK, really. Seriously. We’re just your coworkers.

What the FUCK are we supposed to do with you? We’re at the end of the proverbial rope, and it’s starting to unravel. None of us are violent people, but we have Rambo fantasies of taking you down with an Uzi or hog-tying you, slapping superglue on your lips, then depositing you at the nearest mental health facility. Because, you see, YOU’RE the one who NEEDS HELP and you’re too arrogant to admit it. And we’re exhausted. We’ve tried. AND WE DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO!

2

Come on, man. You’ve got more hate to spill than that.

SPILL IT! Let it ALL out!

3

Throwing things? Literally? How is this person not fired, if that’s so?

(I mean my company hates to fire people and it takes forever, but throw things or get violent and you are done in a flash.)

4

Maybe kiz works at a carnival booth?

Bring a squirt gun to work. Fill it with water. When the cow-orker starts up, get her attention and squirt her a few times. It doesn’t do any damage, and you’d be surprised how fast she’ll learn proper behavior. At least it worked well with my cats. Is she smarter than a cat?

5

Dude, squirt this person and you might be killed.

Though on reflection, getting her to physically assault you might be the only way to get her fired. If that’s you’re angle, I’d recommend simply saying, “I don’t care,” to her every time she starts screetching about something you don’t care about. This should be done in as calm and soothing a toone of voice as you can that still has a chance of being heard.

“I don’t care about that. Unless you have something to say that actually relates to my work, please go away. I’m busy working.”

Repeat as necessary until she explodes.

6

Argh, the hamsters ate my post!

No, I don’t work in a carnival, although I wonder if the bakery where I work is some sort of surreal carnival…

IIC doesn’t throw stuff directly at anybody. She’s not that ignorant. She doesn’t do it most of the time, either, but when she does, she’ll deliberately throw it in your general direction. Cases in point: 1) the knife she tossed right where a fellow coworker was about to put his hand; 2) the packaging she flings when she doesn’t like the way you’re doing something, and 3) the time where, after a rather vicious argument, she tried dropping a mixer bowl onto a coworker’s foot, but thankfully the coworker jumped out of the way.

What’s worse is her mouth and utter lack of respect for anybody, whether it’s a fellow coworker, a supervisor, manager, or upper management. Oh, wait – she’ll try to kiss ass with upper management until they discover her deceit. She’s been called on it several times.

We have a girl working with us who’s severely learning disabled due to a brain injury. It takes her a long time to grasp anything, but once she does, her memory hooks onto it with steel jaws. IIC despises this girl because it takes her a long time to grasp things. If IIC’s not whispering about how stupid she is behind her back, she’s SHRIEKING to her face YOU DUMMY! WHAT ARE YOU DOING? YOU DON’T KNOW ANYTHING! This, of course, makes the girl stammer, stutter, and panic, which, in turn, feeds IIC’s haranguing.

Oh, and she dislikes me most of all because I’m her supervisor. She doesn’t like the way I do things. She refuses to comply with whatever I assign her because, after all, YOU DON’T KNOW ANYTHING AND YOU NEVER DO THINGS THE WAY I WANT THEM DONE. [bland voice] Excuse me? Did you say something? DON’T TURN AWAY WHEN I’M TALKING TO YOU! I’M NOT STUPID! YOU DON’T HAVE TO TELL ME TO DO SOMETHING! Well, yes I do, because, you see, I’m your supervisor, and not everything I tell or ask you to do comes from me personally; I’m told to tell you these things. If you have an issue, talk to our manager or our assistant. If you have an issue with them, take it upstairs. DON’T TELL ME TO DO THAT! I’M NOT LISTENING TO YOU! That’s mild, btw.

As I said in the OP, I’ve personally taken her upstairs to be formally reprimanded. So has our manager and our assistant. IIC has been written up countless times for her behavior, especially toward the LD girl. But upper management, you see, doesn’t want us to make a big deal of it because * after all, she’s a struggling single mother with numerous personal issues, and it would be heartless of us to do anything more unless she actually does something that would physically injure somebody.* Methinks they’re afraid she’ll file a lawsuit if they did fire her, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she would. But I digress.

Excuse me?

You mean I shouldn’t be ranting toward IIC but toward YOU, my bosses? Those who run the store? Those who’ve fired other people for the usual things like not doing one’s job or excessively complaining about one thing or another? I’M FUCKING TRYING TO DO MY JOB HERE AND YOU’RE MAKING IT IMPOSSIBLE BECAUSE YOU WON"T DO ANYTHING WITH HER!

Our direct manager laughs whenever I or anyone else lodges a complaint about her. He thinks it’s a riot that we – and especially me – get so upset over her.

Excuse me?

SHE UNDERMINES EVERY SINGLE FUCKING THING AROUND HERE! YOU DON’T DO SHIT! YOU THINK HER BEHAVIOR’S FUNNY BECAUSE SHE REMINDS YOU OF YOUR EX WIFE!

Oh, so you don’t want to rock the boat, is that it? You’ve said time and again just to wait because one of these days she’ll hang herself and they’ll have no choice but to fire her.

We’re waiting…and waiting…and waiting…

[sub]For the record, she’s what’s called a FT part-timer (i.e., 40+ hours at less than half the pay any of us FT people earn. She’s also 50 years old, which, to me, says more about her than this pitting.[/sub]

7

I think everyone should band together and threaten to walk out, and then do so if they don’t fire her.

Seriously.

8

Video tape her with sound and give her the tape. Seriously, she may not even realize how bad she’s behaving.

9

My mind boggles at how you or your co-workers have been able to put up with her for so long. Look, she can file a lawsuit, but so can you and the rest of your co-workers for upper management trying to force you to continue working in a hostile environment.

10

I am not a lawyer, but it seems clear that this is going to end up in court, possibly, as was suggested, if she files a suit for wrongful termination, or if another co-worker files suit against the company for letting the situation continue to the point where the environment is unworkable for eveyone else. So in the meantime, you should document everything, particularly her misbehavior and your attempts at enforcing discipline.

11

Good grief. If I was the employee she threw a knife at, I’d be filing assault charges. Never mind complaining to management; will it take someone getting stabbed or their foot broken by a heavy mixing bowl or some such to rein her in? Set up some “nannycams” around the bakery and use them as evidence when you file your hostile working environment lawsuit. Either that or use them to show the police why you’re afraid someone is going to get killed.

12

[QUOTE=Sad and Deranged]
My mind boggles at how you or your co-workers have been able to put up with her for so long.

[QUOTE]

That was the other point I was going to make if I’d continued. As incomprehensible as this sounds, nobody else in the department wants to issue a formal complaint. The LD girl is deathly afraid of her. Two others (one of whom almost lost her foot with the mixing bowl) will bitch and moan about her until the cows come home, but don’t wish to say anything because they don’t want her to lose her job, being a single mother and all that. The others don’t want to get involved. So it’s basically been only our assistant and me who’s been officially complaining. Both of us are on the verge of walking out, but haven’t because neither of us have yet to find employment that pays as much as we’re both making.

BTW, the bulk of the assault threats happened earlier this year when we had our old boss, who was probably a thousand times worse verbally than IIC. He was the only one who could shut her down with a glance, which no doubt fueled her frustration enough to warrant throwing around stuff.

Trust me, if she attempts anything physical at this point, I won’t hesitate to not only report her to store management, but also to the police. I don’t care if I tarnish our parent company’s reputation as being a “fun” place to work (it’s grounds for dismissal if a manager raises his/her voice to an employee). The snarky side of me claps with glee that her ex is a cop in the town where our store is – can you imagine if he was called in for the prelimary investigation? Hee!

13

It seems to me that she is creating a real litigation risk with regard to the person with disabilities because of a “hostile working environment” (magic words). One possible way address the issue in a way that upper management/human resources/legal may respond to is to issue her a formal warning or improvement plan because of her creating a hostile working environment for a person with disabilities.

Because she is a woman over 40 (possibly with physical disabilities), she is in several protected classes, which may explain some of the resistance of upper managaement to deal with her. However, abuse of a person with mental disabilities is both wrong in itself and, if permitted to go on by management, creates a risk of the mentally disabled person suing. Right now, management may see the risk of dealing with her, but if they are shown that there is a countervailing risk in not dealing with her, it may spur them to take action (or, perhaps, it might not, but it could be worth a try).

Remember, I am not your lawyer, and I don’t even know what jurisdiction this is in, so don’t do anything without talking to your company’s legal or human resources department, or getting other advice from a professional who knows your particular situation.

14

Another thought is to document every time she is insubordinate or breaches policy in a formal, written complaint. You say management repeats: “You’ve said time and again just to wait because one of these days she’ll hang herself and they’ll have no choice but to fire her.” However, although management seems to be waiting for her do something big, it may be easier to have a large trail of documented small problems. Also, if she does something big, it is easier for it not to be excused if it is against a background of smaller offenses.

Management is apt to let these problems fester unless someone is making a pain in the neck of herself to get the problem resolved. You may have to be that pain in the neck. Also, it is much easier to get management to act if you’ve put together the paper trail that will make it easier to act.

15

I don’t know how it is where you live, but in my town cops get transfered to different preceincts so that they won’t have to officially investigate their ex-spouse(s). We have a friend who is a cop and has had this transfer happen to her twice. We’ve told her that she needs to start marrying guys in other cities.

kiz If you are the supervisor of this person, why doesn’t your word carry more weight with the powers that be? Are you sure you want to continue working where one disruptive, bullying employee holds the whole business hostage?

16

I only know of one instance when she was deliberately written up re her behavior toward the LD grl. I wasn’t the one who initiated it, so I have no idea if there was ever a follow-up.

I hate sounding like a whiny “But…but…” (and please I don’t mean to be if I’m coming off as such), BUT that’s yet another issue: You can write her up all you want. You can inititate formal improvement plans that only she is accountable for. It only sticks at the outset, then she reverts to the same behavior. It’s like HR just keeps giving her more and more rope to hang herself, but she doesn’t fathom it, even when she’s told informally that’s what they’re doing.

That’s true, and I honestly believe that’s the crux of their reluctance to do anything. They bent over backward when her son was in the hospital with the gift certificates. I certainly can’t complain because they’ve given me extra time off so I can look after my mother.

As for the LD girl…I don’t think she knows or realizes she could inititate a lawsuit. And if she already knows or is told, I don’t think she’d ever do it just because she’d be terrified of the repercussions.

I know I could be the ultimate shit stirrer and initiate one of my own citing the hostile work environment angle. That’s where I hesitate, not only because of my job, but also because of the time involved, etc., that naturally occurs with such. But it’s definitely something to think about.

17

OK, I didn’t realize the cop thing. I have no idea if that’s what they do here. It makes sense, though.

My words do carry weight, but only so far. I’m not officially management, for one. Those who are – our assistant and our direct manager – have much more clout. The assisant’s so sick of the entire thing that, as I’ve already said, she’s on the verge of leaving. Our manager either just doesn’t care and/or sees IIC’s behavior as a source of amusement (actually I don’t think he realizes the seriousness of it, but that’s another story).

I’ve got one foot out the door, too. That’s exactly what IIC wants, btw, and she’s said so to my face. So of course I’ll be damned if I let her bully me out of there.

18

Yanno it makes me wonder why such a nice woman is still single…oh wait…right.

19

My advice to you would be to approach the most trusted person above you (and I hope that’s not the person who laughs at how “upset” you and your co-workers are made by the IIC) and say that because you love the fun atmosphere of your workplace so much, you are proposing an initiative to keep it safe and fun for everyone.

Read up on workplace bullying, and specifically anti-bullying policies. Prepare an anti-bullying policy (these are best done at hiring but can also be signed and implemented retroactively) and propose that your company lead the way in eliminating workplace bullying and making the workplace more enjoyable for everyone. Such policies make it a LOT easier for people to stand up and complain, and a lot easier for employers to have comfortable grounds for firing people like this.

This is a very typical bullying situation – including the part about the manager finding it amusing (he wouldn’t the second he was at the pointy end of the stick, and I would mark him as a lousy people manager henceforth). The bully will recognize the policy for what it is and make lots of noise about it, but you can always stand by your commitment and vision to make the workplace more pleasant for everyone.

20

Hear, hear!

Threaten to do this. Threaten to not work until she is gone. When you hit them in the wallet, they’ll do something. Better for them to put up with one lawsuit from a well-documented firing than multiple lawsuits from a well-documented case of an unsafe work environment.

And I also second the idea of videoing her doing her thing. That will be wonderful in court.