Unrealistic expectations & controlling sabotaging co-worker

[s]

I don't know if this is considered etiquette related so feel free to move.  I have posted about this a little on AAM but I feel I would get more responses here.

And sorry if this is super long but I appreciate anyone who reads and responds!


Bg: This is regarding my co-worker Danielle aka K'nnichat again.  The one who obsessively wanted to chat via e-mail all day at work and if I didn't respond right away she'd badger me with more e-mails and phone calls.  I think it's been 2 months and she does not bother me now that I've set boundaries.  Once in awhile we e-mail about work related things.  Maybe once or twice she's tried to make conversation and I ignored it.  We did exchange some fb messages out of work and she did ask me twice why we can't chat and go back to that etc.  I firmly told her it wasn't happening and that I was under a lot of pressure and have to keep my productivity up.  Which is true.

We both were switched to work on this new project 5 months ago.  Before that we were on another project with each other for 3 years.  Besides her obsession with chatting she was/is very controlling.  She is in no way a manager or supervisor.  We hold the exact same position, she has just been here 2 years longer than me.  For example, I used to train a lot of temps in my office.  She is in our other office in another state.  I would let her know I'd be training and she would still obsessively e-mail me and CALL me when she knew I was training the new temps at my desk!  It was very interruptive.  And she would e-mail me asking if I remembered to show them A,B,& C etc.  Like I don't know what I'm doing sheesh!  I could go on and on about the controlling things she did but you get the picture.

End Bg



I am livid.  I feel like Danielle is screwing us all over in my office!  She is the only one in our position in her office and in my office there are 4 of us. Our productivity is low and first of all it’s because of the ridiculous expectations that we should be able to do so much work in a certain amount of time.  The amount that they are asking is unrealistic and none of us can meet it. 

I did speak with one of my co-workers, Debra, and found that she was documenting her time that she was not working in our main software program. My supervisor had sent out this tracking sheet for us to do that but when I asked her what kinds of things should be put on there she didn’t really give me anything to go off of.

I asked her about specific things like what about X and Y? And would be told that that was already taken into account when they were calculating my productivity stats. However, I found that hard to believe because though X is completed in our main software program, the Y part of it is not and therefore not trackable. I mentioned my concerns about this at least three times.

However, Debra has been including the Y part in her tracking sheet and she said our supervisor has not bounced it back to her at all so we assume it was acceptable. There are also a host of other things she includes on this tracking sheet which would be relevant to me as well since we hold the exact same position.

So I have started filling out this tracking sheet. I think it would definitely help my stats a little, though I’ll still be unable to meet their workload expectations. I have concluded that my supervisor has failed as a supervisor to give me clear guidance and make expectations clear, especially when I said I didn’t understand why my stats were low. And she even gave me misinformation/lied to me regarding this tracking sheet.

On a side note I think this tracking sheet is utterly ridiculous. It’s basically an account of every single minute of your work day minus time spent working on our software program which is trackable.  Another side note, our main software program has a lot of bugs and sometimes it goes really slow which obviously affects our work.  They keep promising to fix it but it's had issues for as long as I've been here...


Anyways, Danielle basically steals work from us!  And works on the stuff that is not #1 priority!  Last Friday she took all of X & Y all for herself and did not split them with us when she is supposed to!  We each have an assigned day to manage X & Y and if it’s manageable then you can do all it all yourself.  Friday it was backlogged though so she should not have managed it all herself. 

We also had a lot of Z on Friday too which is the #1 priority but nope, she was working on X & Y.  I think the backlog bugged her or something.  She comes across a bit OCD to me. I hear from other people she makes lots of errors too.  Our supervisor does nothing!  I keep trying to tell senior staff in my position to talk to her supervisor not our supervisor.  We are on very friendly terms and all of us in my office feel the same way about the productivity stats and Danielle so I don't feel I crossed any lines by suggesting if our supervisor wasn't going to do anything that they should talk to Danielle's direct supervisor. 

I feel like since I'm new to this project I can't really say anything and don't have as much information as senior staff do since they monitor that everyone is staying on task and doing what is considered priority first etc.  They have had to tell Danielle many times that she needs to focus on Z not X & Y.  And she won't listen and they tell our supervisor who does nothing. I heard that Danielle’s productivity is like at 80% and the rest of us are between 40-60%! 

Also, besides Danielle pretty much doing as she pleases, she tries to control our department.  She tries to manage client cases when our job is more clerical.  Managing client cases is a completely different job!  Also, for example today is Debra's day to manage X & Y.  She hadn't assigned anything out and so Danielle e-mailed her to remind her!  Debra said she would get to it soon and Danielle said she had checked it already and that there is this much to do for X & Y by the way.  It's like she's trying to manage Debra!  She knows better than to pull that with me.  Unfortunately the rest of my co-workers have not developed as much of a spine against Danielle as I have since they have not dealt with her as long as I have. 

Now a lot of this stuff may not directly affect me but when she is indirectly affecting all of our stats then that's a big problem to me.

[s]

Here is an e-mail that one of the senior staff in our position, Patty, showed us.

The first one was sent to all of us and the remaining e-mails are just between Patty and Danielle:

Hi ladies,

Just wanted to know if one of you is expecting something? I’ve noticed that majority of A are always getting looked at since yesterday. I understand why we do this with B so we can label and work on C first but can we please stop doing this with A because it just looks like you’re being picky.

 
Thanks!!

Patty
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Oh sorry, I like to look ahead in the morning to see if we have any D or E forms for anyone.  I always start at the bottom though when I take mine.  I do it out of habit.


Danielle

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No need to do that because we’ll eventually get to it and that’s everyone responsibility.

Patty


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I know I know, I have to de program my self from my last project. I know you all will get to them.  But if I do see D & E I like to make sure it's taken care of. You can tell what those are you know.


Danielle




Our last project ended 5 months ago so I don't know why she needs to deprogram herself.  She wasn't like this when we first moved onto new project and were still learning.  I think since we aren't fresh newbies anymore she is trying to be more controlling and manage things.

[Slartibartfast]

The problem is your supervisor, frankly, and it sounds like something you can't really do much about.  I totally understand your frustration.  However, the only thing you can really make changes in is what YOU do:

1) Be extra-conscientious about marking down everything you do and when - if you can, write down what the rest of your to-do list is too.  (For example, "2 hours on Project X.  Still left undone: ~1 hour on Y and ~3 hours on Z."  Then after the two hours: "2 hours on Project Z.  No X or Y to do at the moment." etc.)  If your supervisor tells you you should have been doing something else, give him some of the "snapshots in time" and ask him how you should be prioritizing differently.

2) About the trackable/billable time: write out a full list of as many "outside" tasks as you can and bring it to your supervisor in writing.  "Supervisor, which of these should we count as Y?  Recently we've discovered we're tracking different things, which means the productivity sheets you're asking us to do aren't giving you any useful information.  Please make a decision about what counts as Y and let all of us know so we're doing the same thing."  Again, this is a CYA move: if your supervisor tries to tell you someone else is more productive, you can point to the place (in writing!) where you told him/her that the productivity stats aren't accurate.

3) Take things up with people other than your supervisor whenever it's appropriate.  Not maliciously, just as a logical consequence of trying to get your job done 

[s]

The problem is your supervisor, frankly, and it sounds like something you can't really do much about.  I totally understand your frustration.  However, the only thing you can really make changes in is what YOU do:

1) Be extra-conscientious about marking down everything you do and when - if you can, write down what the rest of your to-do list is too.  (For example, "2 hours on Project X.  Still left undone: ~1 hour on Y and ~3 hours on Z."  Then after the two hours: "2 hours on Project Z.  No X or Y to do at the moment." etc.)  If your supervisor tells you you should have been doing something else, give him some of the "snapshots in time" and ask him how you should be prioritizing differently.

2) About the trackable/billable time: write out a full list of as many "outside" tasks as you can and bring it to your supervisor in writing.  "Supervisor, which of these should we count as Y?  Recently we've discovered we're tracking different things, which means the productivity sheets you're asking us to do aren't giving you any useful information.  Please make a decision about what counts as Y and let all of us know so we're doing the same thing."  Again, this is a CYA move: if your supervisor tries to tell you someone else is more productive, you can point to the place (in writing!) where you told him/her that the productivity stats aren't accurate.

3) Take things up with people other than your supervisor whenever it's appropriate.  Not maliciously, just as a logical consequence of trying to get your job done 

Thank you, Slartibartfast.  I am definitely trying to do all that.  But yeah it's really frustrating.     I hope the senior staff will bring it up to Danielle's direct supervisor in her office eventually.  But yes I am definitely documenting EVERYTHING I do now!

[cass2591]

Locked because we try to keep this forum rant free.