Problem Coworker

So I know I've mentioned my problematic coworker, but I need to rant about her again.

There are very, very few people on my "DO NOT WANT" list, and she's one of them. She walks around with meek exterior and actually does have stage IV cancer, so I do feel somewhat sympathetic and sorry for her. However, that being said, she has been hired to do a job, and she works directly under me as a part-timer. It's my responsibility to maintain work flow, trouble-shoot and backup all stages of the production process as necessary to make sure we meet our deadlines every day. That means I feed her work, answer questions, etc. She's one of 4 part-timers I have, and I get along with the other three quite well ... well, I did until one got fired because she couldn't keep up with the volume, but I digress.

I know my proofers and I understand their habits and ways of working, so I pretty much tailor how I delegate jobs based on that. In the morning, proofer A always gets right to work and knocks out her pile right away, so I always give her the prioritized rush jobs. Problem proofer takes her work, and sits on her butt for an hour or two taking care of her personal business before she starts, so I don't give her anything critical timewise. She has her timing down to a science and knows about how long she can procrastinate before she needs to start on what she gets. That mindset is foreign to me. We all do our own goofing off, but the rest of us take care of business first because we have no way of knowing how many new orders might be submitted over the course of the day to add to what we start with.

Occasionally, like today, she gets bit in the butt by it, but that's not my rant today.

She has the department mostly buffaloed. I'm guessing it's the cancer thing. I'll flat out tell her know if she wants something, and I don't think it needs doing, and she doesn't like. She goes right over my head. No one else will tell her, "No." So she gets all kinds of little opinion changes made to jobs. *This* needs a comma here; *that* needs a wording change there because you just shouldn't use that language. To clarify, the language isn't wrong and the comma was mainly a matter of opinion - a nitpicky, grammar Nazi type technicality, but *she* wanted it done. I said make a note of it and send the job on, but that wouldn't do, so she PMs the higher-ups who cave in, and yes, they cave instead of fighting with her. I know this from other office gossip.

So any authority I might have has been undermined because we're not all on the same page. Whatever.

I wouldn't care except she has outright snapped and even yelled at me for basically doing my job - three times in the past. Tuesday was the 4th time. She was already upset because she let us know she'd be an hour late and myself and proofer A just went ahead and did her share of the work before she arrived. It was there and we were bored. No reason not to. I knew she'd be upset by that, but oh well.

So eventually, she comes in with her electronic stapler. And complains that it's jammed and won't work and sticks it in my face. As it's unplugged, I'm limited in what I can do, but I can see that there isn't any staple dangling. It's almost certainly not jammed. Usually, that means there's a cartridge issue. So I take out the cartridge, pull out a short length of staples, and tell her to go back and see if that fixes it fully expecting that it probably will. Most times, it does. Like I said, my job involves a lot of trouble-shooting. She doesn't come back, so I assume that did take care of. Proofer A, btw, backed me on this as she deals with her stapler the same way. Electronic staplers, btw, SUCK.

Not long after, some more orders come in, so I deal with those and run them out to problem coworker, and I notice she's using her elbow grease stapler, not the electronic one. In other words, the fix didn't work, but she didn't bother to tell me as much. Now, I have a broken electronic stapler at my work station, and since I do very little hard copy/QA (the stage problem coworker was working on), I just use my elbow grease stapler. I find it doesn't slow me down all that much to use it over an electric. So I mentally shrug and make a note to check her stapler after she leaves and I have free access to her work space and stapler.

I go back to my work space and, sure enough, more orders are in. I work through trouble-shooting them and getting them set up to delegate out, and as I'm turning to the printer, I feel something against my leg. I turn around and it's problem coworker ... She's one her knees trying to shove her way under my desk, past my leg to plug in her stapler! Completely bizarre and unacceptable ... At that point, I'm a wee bit exasperated with her. I ask her what she thinks she's doing, and she tells me it's still jammed. It's not, but I tell her to leave it. So she starts to wander off with the cord. I tell her to leave that too.

All she had to do was tell me the cartridge adjustment didn't work! But no, she had to get worked up over it and then do whatever it was she thought she was doing.

At any rate, I plug it in with my broken stapler cord, and yep, it still won't staple. So I swap out the cartridge in it for the one in my broken stapler. Sometimes, electronic staplers are remarkably finicky about the cartridge, and sometimes, the glue on the staples in a cartridge is too thick so the stapler can't break them off properly. Then, guess what? The stapler doesn't work. And guess what? Swapping the cartridge works. Sure enough, two staple attempts after inserting the new cartridge, her stapler was working just fine.

And I'll keep that cartridge I took out. My stapler is still broken, but that cartridge might work in someone else's stapler. They're weird that way. Of course, I'll give to someone who can be counted on to tell me if it doesn't work.

a reply to: ketsuko

Impressive op.

I used to be a proofer years ago.
I agree that i would be the same as you and get it all out straight away in case of late changes.

I worked in the flexo-press (printing on plastic) industry.

Good luck with it.

a reply to: SecretKnowledge

It only really bothers me on the days when we get more orders than normal, and she gets bit by it. Otherwise, that's on her how she does it. She mostly handles business that way it needs to be done. If she didn't, I'd complain about her to the upper ranks more because I know she's an annoyance to them too.

I mainly just keep hoping that if I give her enough rope, she'll hang herself.

Her big problem is that she needs to "find" things. She has to get her scalp so to speak. So she's always looking for something that absolutely has to be fixed so she can feel like she's important.

a reply to: ketsuko

Sounds like a royal PITA to me.

Cancer has a weird way of breaking down a person. Sometimes a complete change of personality takes place on those who have it. Things that a regularly healthy person should/would shrug off become big deals. I am no professional certainly but I assume it has to to do with some need to take control. They have no control over their own health predicament sometimes there isn’t anything that can be done they are told that point blank, nothing can be done your doing die…

This need to control their fate manifests into a sort of control freak mentality where as they try to hyper manage the problems they encounter even if it seems trivial to everyone else around them. Even so far as breaking the chain of command because it gives them the sense of control they desire. I’ve seen it. Go from not caring about anything to literally weighing their food by the gram as tho it would make any difference.

Not saying it justifies anything just what I’ve experienced.

a reply to: ketsuko

a reply to: Athetos

I think it just ramped up pre-existing craziness. Her life from what she's told others was already a mess of chaos. She's a crazy cat lady, lives with way too much clutter, possibly borderline hoarding, and never seems to be "happy" unless there is some kind of crisis going on somehow.

At least she's still so mad she's not talking to me because she's my only proofer Friday afternoon, and I was dreading it.

a reply to: ketsuko
I'm guessing this woman lives alone?
I've had a few experiences in the office world myself, and there are just some who need attention, and work is one of the places they can get it.
Also, she may be on heavy medications that affect her thinking? I do feel badly for her, being so ill is awful for her.
But you must have buckets of patience to deal with her, that's not easy, I've done it!

a reply to: ketsuko

I worked next to this dept that had this guy Joe.
Joe loved to scream and make everyone’s life miserable. One of his subordinates was on the verge of a nervous breakdown because of him. I didn’t directly work with him but one day we were on a shared project
And……he yelled at me….totally snapped for no reason…

I have that flight or fight thing, and for me it’s 100% fight every_single_time..
So yelled back, but louder and meaner… You know what, he loved me after that. I think I was the only person in decades that ever stood up to him.

Someone yells at you, yell back.

Also why is someone with that level cancer even working?

a reply to: ketsuko

Be careful of your words

I mainly just keep hoping that if I give her enough rope, she'll hang herself.

How old is she?

originally posted by: RonnieJersey
a reply to: ketsuko
I'm guessing this woman lives alone?
I've had a few experiences in the office world myself, and there are just some who need attention, and work is one of the places they can get it.
Also, she may be on heavy medications that affect her thinking? I do feel badly for her, being so ill is awful for her.
But you must have buckets of patience to deal with her, that's not easy, I've done it!

Yep as women we all know, bitter, angry women are the absolute worst to work with.

originally posted by: JAGStorm

originally posted by: RonnieJersey
a reply to: ketsuko
I'm guessing this woman lives alone?
I've had a few experiences in the office world myself, and there are just some who need attention, and work is one of the places they can get it.
Also, she may be on heavy medications that affect her thinking? I do feel badly for her, being so ill is awful for her.
But you must have buckets of patience to deal with her, that's not easy, I've done it!

Yep as women we all know, bitter, angry women are the absolute worst to work with.

I once worked with an older woman who had been with the company for several years in the office, and made everyone's life miserable. Her only marriage lasted 3 months, she was just mentally unwell. As soon as the boss left to go out on jobs, she would have her friends in and bs the day away. I had my own office, so I'd shut the door and turn my stereo on. She was a known troublemaker, and one day she flipped out and as I came out of my office she came running and shoved me. Well I called the boss and told him I was pressing charges for assault - He fired her.

a reply to: ketsuko

Believe it or not I've worked at an ad agency for about a year taking a hiatus from security a couple of years back. I was the only male employee.

It felt like I stepped through the looking glass straight into bi-polar disorder land.

Not the best place to be when you're dealing with ptsd yourself although I've come to realize that life teaches you to get over certain things by turning up the heat even more.

When you get to the place where you start laughing at how absurd things have become a moment of insight is right around the corner.

a reply to: ketsuko

Sounds frustrating. I will admit that when I got to electric stapler I laughed and saw an image of the swingline stapler guy in Office Space. Thanks for ranting; I like to hear about workplace frustrations.

I am horrible at understanding punctuation. I do try though; I call it “creative punctuation”.

The poor woman is dying of cancer and you want to bang on about a stapler.

Get a grip.

a reply to: SecretKnowledge

Figure of speech, but I catch your drift. Mainly, there are things she does that will bite her if the wrong people catch her at it. I could put a stop to it if I cared enough to pick that battle.

I don't.

originally posted by: Bradders3479
The poor woman is dying of cancer and you want to bang on about a stapler.

Get a grip.

Says you. That's all it would be if she behaved relatively normally, but it is 100% unacceptable for her to try to physically force herself under my desk, past my legs in a snit without at least telling me the first try hadn't worked.

Lack of communication is on her.

Also, this is not the first incident. She has yelled at me for making sure she does her share of the work. She wanted to dictate when she would get work and how much, and if you read my description of her habits, you will see this results in proofer A being overburdened. It's not that she can't, she just would prefer not to.

Again, I picked that battle and she yelled at me. I am taking her the work now though.

a reply to: ketsuko

Thank you.

See that rope?

Give her a little bit of slack, no matter how much frustrating it will be.

Thanks

a reply to: ketsuko

Behaving relatively normal and stage 4 cancer do not go hand in hand in my experience.

I lost both parents and watched them slowly die of cancer. I can only assume that you haven't had to deal with something like that otherwise you would have more compassion and understanding for this lady.

She won't be around much longer so that solves your petty problems and issues with her attitude anyway.

a reply to: Bradders3479

If this were something health related, fine, but we have a job to do. It is my job to make sure we get things done on time. I am not losing my job because I feel bad over her situation.

She chose to work. I make plenty of allowances already seeing as how I have lost two grandparents to cancer, my mother-in-law, and my mom has been through three rounds of cancer treatment herself.

However, like being a veteran, being a cancer patient does not make someone a Saint and beyond reproach. Miserable people can and do get cancer, and it does not magically give them an attitude adjustment. We have sent our cancer treatment products to prisons. Guess what? Murderers get and die from cancer too.

Also, did you ever think that maybe I'm here ranting about it because I'd rather get my frustrations off my chest anonymously than make an issue of it *at work* where it would create more problems for her? If she gets herself into trouble with her antics, that's on her. I'm beyond wanting to help her and she's beyond letting me, but I am not creating problems for her because she is a what she is. I can vent here relatively safely because I freakin' need to vent.

a reply to: ketsuko

I would have had a good laugh, but anxiety is a bitch...