How do I diplomatically get my coworker to leave me the fuck alone?

Drez

My newish coworker is one of the most annoying people I've ever had the misfortune of working with. She is the kind of person who refuses to work on her own for longer than a minute. Not only does she have dozens of questions and comments about EVERY SINGLE THING she is working on, but she will ask them one by one, interrupting me about once per minute.

I won't bore you with the calculus but if you take the limit of my time spent dealing with her as it approaches my patience, the result is that I am at my wit's end. I already have a fuckton of work to do and I can't do hers too.

I'm not the only one that feels this way and I've expressed my concerns to my boss already who shares my general outlook but can't do anything at the moment. So it falls on me to handle it.

Here's an example of what she does. For purposes of this post and to protect our identities, I will refer to her as The Timewasteling.

So, I asked The Timewasteling if she could visually scan the aesthetic of a presentation I just edited. I asked her because my boss told me I should ask her. Even as I was asking her for her help, I knew it was a mistake. I barely made it back to my cubicle before The Timewasteling thumped over to me asking about something on the second slide. Holy shit, can The Timewasteling not keep a list and ask me all your questions after you look at all 30+ slides?

No, The Timewasteling cannot as she has proven a dozen and a half times since she started here.

I've tried (a) diplomatically asking her to keep a log of questions to ask me afterward, (b) bluntly asking her to keep a log of questions to ask me afterward, and (c) drinking, but none of those have mitigated the aggravation whatsoever.

There are other issues, like the fact that she routinely (read: almost always) misses deadlines which pushes my and my coworker's deadlines out creating more work and stress for us. Oh and the shit she does produce is almost always wrong so we have to double check everything anyway.

I feel like she produces absolutely no value and I do NOT like being mean but I'm finding it harder and harder to maintain my normally zen like facade of unflappable patience with her. I don't like adding negativity to the world and I don't think it's smart to come off as negative in the workplace but I'm at wit's end.

I don't expect a solution, I mainly wanted to rant, but if anyone has any advice I'm all ears (actually I only have two ears).

Djeet

Eh, you don't. This cannot happen diplomatically, and in my experience rocking the boat seldom results in a development I'd prefer to just letting sleeping dogs lie.

If you are asked by a higher up to get her involved on something (like reviewing your work), send it in an email to her and CC your manager. Just get it off your plate and into her court. Follow-up with an ask of status a few days later. If the employee doesn't play nice or is a goldbricker then you want to document how you've been including her and her lack of work/progress on the matter is holding things up.

I've had people hold me up on deadlines and the only way that works for me is shaming. After I complete my part I ping her CC'ing our boss. Follow-up ping 2 days later, repeat, a few days before deadline send a high urgency reply-all if she's not responding.

If I have to deal with a time-waster who's chatty I'll usually put my busy-face on (irritation) or plugin the phones.


Going through a slide-deck or presentation is a bit different, since you usually need to understand the previous slides to get where you want to go on current slide. You may be able to put that one to bed faster if you just schedule a meeting to do an overview of the slides and let her get back to you with follow up Q's.

ceres

How long has she been working there? Is she still in a training period or anything?

SammyF

ceres wrote: »

How long has she been working there? Is she still in a training period or anything?

This was my first question when I started reading this, as well. You generally expect some element of this with a new hire until he or she feels settled with the office culture and standard operating practices. Indeed, most managers generally hope that the new hire will ask questions because it means that she's at least trying to mentally engage with her job.

Having to explain to a 27-year-old woman just hired as my new administrative assistant how to do a mail-merge in Microsoft Office so she can send out a bunch of letters on my behalf is admittedly annoying because I find myself wondering how someone goes that long without learning that skill. And I definitely have more valuable things I could be doing with that time. You know what's infinitely worse, though? Finding out that all of your outgoing mail is running ten days behind schedule because she never thought to ask how to do it, so she's been addressing each and every envelop one at a time by hand.

If two months go by, and she keeps asking you the exact same question over and over again without learning the answer, it's time to revisit either how you conduct training or why anyone thought it would be a brilliant idea to hire this person in the first place, but if her questions continue to keep getting smarter and more detail-oriented, then this is working out exactly the way it ought to. Embrace it as a leadership opportunity, and then mention said leadership opportunity to your boss the next time you want to ask for a raise or promotion.

EDIT: For purposes of helping your boss figure out what the fuck is going on, it usually makes no sense to have the new staffer review the work of the old staffer. She ought to just sit with you while you design it so that you can explain your thought process to her, that she can learn how to approach the task the same way you do. After that's been done, she should be assigned her own work, and you should be assigned to review it and offer constructive criticism to help her improve the quality of her work.

schuss

Focus on teaching how to fish. If these are work questions, it's 100% legit for her to be asking them. Do you have training materials? Help resources? Point her in the direction of those. As far as "things every moment", just email her the presentation with track changes on, and tell her to send it back when she's done. If you have to show her the same thing 2 or 3 times, she's a true wastrel. If not, then more likely the problems are a mix of office culture/resources and training.

snichols

Some people just love to work collaboratively like that. Especially noobs. It can be annoying though as you know!

My suggestion would be to straight up tell her that you don't like working that way. No need to be rude about it. Just let her know that she needs to be more sensitive to how you work. Let her know that you think her questions are important, but it wastes your time to nickle & dime you with them. Remind you that you have your own work to do!

If she continues doing it then you may have to be less diplomatic. That could be fun to watch.

steve

The Ender

snichols wrote: »

Some people just love to work collaboratively like that. Especially noobs. It can be annoying though as you know!

My suggestion would be to straight up tell her that you don't like working that way. No need to be rude about it. Just let her know that she needs to be more sensitive to how you work. Let her know that you think her questions are important, but it wastes your time to nickle & dime you with them. Remind you that you have your own work to do!

If she continues doing it then you may have to be less diplomatic. That could be fun to watch.

steve

Erm. I would love to agree with this advice, but I have to disagree. It might just be me, but in my experience, even very diplomatically telling a co-worker that you don't like [x] that they are doing can, and often does, cause dumb bullshit office drama - either because the request you made was short-sighted, or because the co-worker reacts badly to any sort of criticism.

I like all of @SammyF 's advice. It could be, of course, that's it's not the training or the material, and she as a person is just kind of like that : and if you're going to be her co-worker, well, you're kind of going to have to deal with it (so long as management wants to keep her around).

Mr Ray

I found myself in the shoes of the Timewasteling in my first real job. My bosses had no issues with my actual performance, just that I kept asking the same questions over and over and it was getting frustrating for them. After a few weeks I was brought into a performance review where they basically told me "We can't keep answering all your questions, especially when most of them are things you should already know, and should be writing down. We've asked you to keep a log of things and we don't think you're doing it right, and we think its because you don't know how. So we're going to have Mike show you how to keep a logbook properly. And he's going to check what you've written every week and sign your logbook to prove that you're doing it properly."

That was the kick up the arse I needed to start writing everything down, because I liked my job and wanted to keep it. Every time I did something new it would be titled, dated and bullet-pointed with instructions to future-me so that I wouldn't have to ask about anything I'd already been told again. And you know what? 90% of the time just writing something down is enough to make sure you don't need the notes; a lot of people learn better that way. And I did. My next performance review was glowing, to the surprise of both my managers. Turns out I'm not incompetent, I just have a shitty memory.

So my advice would be to take a look at what notes she's taking (if any), and if they're not good enough, get her a new logbook and show her how to keep records properly. And when she asks you something you suspect she'll forget, make sure she's writing it down. Just a simple "do you have your logbook?" or "you might want to write this down" will do. If she still fails to keep her records up to date after explicitly being instructed to do so then she's obviously not very keen on keeping her job.

Inquisitor77

The new breed seems to be completely undertaught when it comes to basic time and work management skills. Your suggestion about noting all questions until the end is something really basic that unfortunately needs to be reinforced. The fact that you've mentioned this repeatedly but she still refuses to do it is a big red flag. At this point, you probably need to be firm-but-polite and simply refuse to answer any questions unless she has written them all down first and proven that she has taken the time to go through the work herself.

Similarly, taking notes (per @Mr Ray) is something pretty basic that you will need to constantly reinforce as well. If it's something she's already asked you before, then you need to point out that you think you've already answered this question, and that she may want to write it down for future reference. If she refuses to do this, then you will need to again be firm-but-polite and clearly state that you've answered this question already, and you unfortunately don't have the time to answer it again if she is not going to be considerate enough to write it down.

You've mentioned talking to your boss about this, and this is probably something that he will need to address directly before it gets out of hand. In all honesty if you are not in a position of supervision or direct management over this colleague than you are in a difficult position re: dictating standard work habits. Your boss is much better suited to simply sit her down and say that he's directly observed and gotten multiple feedback regarding the two issues above, and that she needs to start following up on these things in a more organized fashion. You may want to make it clear to him that it's directly affecting your ability to get your work done, and you are finding it difficult to manage her without causing unnecessary conflict.

Your boss is supposed to deal with this kind of stuff. That's ostensibly why he's being paid more, right?

SammyF

I think @Mr Ray has some really fantastic points, and I agree with most of what @Inquisitor77 has to add, as well. Mainly though I want to iterate explicitly that no matter how you go forward with this, approach it with the philosophy of "I just want to help this other person feel comfortable and confident enough in her job that she can work independently." Be positive, affirmative and collaborative when considering and enacting solutions. While this person may be developing a reputation as a time waster, you don't want to accidentally foster a reputation as someone who doesn't always play well with others.

I had two field organizers several years back who were in sort of the same situation. One was speedy, and one was slow. Because they were partners, the slow one always functioned kind of like a drag parachute on the other, but the thing was, she was just very meticulous. She liked to double check her paperwork and her numbers. She liked to make sure she hadn't left a line blank. She liked to ask 20 questions during field staff meetings so that she wouldn't find herself not knowing an answer when she was alone.

This other kid would complain constantly about his partner, but what the fuck am I going to do as their boss? Tell an employee to stop caring so much about doing her job exactly to the letter of my specifications?

Eventually I had their direct supervisor assign them new partners, and that solved my primary problem: I didn't have to hear the guy complaining anymore. But now that's basically all I remember about the kid: he was tall, had red hair, and a bad attitude about a female coworker whose only real crime was wanting to make sure she did a good job. Once the girl had a little bit more confidence (which she wasn't going to get with a partner who treated her like she was a waste of air), she grew into a model employee, and I was more than happy to give her a reference.

EDIT: And I'm not sharing this perspective because I think you're wrong or not approaching this correctly or anything of that nature; I don't know exactly what's going on here, how long she's been employed there beyond the fact you called her "new-ish," etc. I just want to make sure you're aware that the phrase "I can't work with this person" is a double edged sword. If you get her to "leave you the fuck alone" and then she starts working with someone else and markedly improves her performance, any manager worth his salt is going to be forgiven for wondering whether the problem was you all along. Approaching this issue with the right philosophy and strategy can preempt that sort of judgement.

cmsamo

Mr Ray I totally agree with what you said. I keep really detailed handwritten logbooks. The problem is, after 10 years of work experience, I just wish someone had invented CTRL-F for them! I've tried to switch to online note taking (recommend:Evernote) because you can paste work snippets into it, and annotate/share with colleagues. That said I appreciate not everyone can digital note take

Delzhand

"I appreciate that you value my input and sometimes need my assistance, but how would you handle these questions if I was out sick or on vacation?"

The implicit follow up is "yeah, do that"

Inquisitor77

Agree with @SammyF. You're only going to shoot yourself in the foot if you play this off as a zero-sum game. Always orient problems around self improvement, organizational efficiency, and business outcomes. In this case, the problem isn't that, "I can't work with Jane, she's a dumbass." The issue (not problem) is that, "Jane is clearly new, and I've tried to help her out by making XYZ suggestions, but it doesn't seem like they're sticking to well, and I am finding it more difficult to manage my time. I have already tried ABC, but do you think there anything else I should be doing that might help guide her better?"

It also couldn't help to just have a good one-on-one lunch with her in a more informal setting. Getting to know her and how she ticks could go a long way to helping you figure out what's going on and potential solutions to the problem. It could very well just be a confidence/social thing on her end. She probably isn't so completely unaware that she doesn't realize she's pestering people and coming off as a complete incompetent, so she may already feel ostracized, and simmering work conflict is just making things worse in terms of how supported she feels.

From a personal perspective, it always helps to approach these situations not as "things that make my job more difficult" but as "things I can overcome that will prove to people that I am management/promotion material". When it comes to their jobs, people tend to tunnel vision into their specific tasks and responsibilities, and dump this stuff onto management's lap. Which is what you're supposed to do - but it's how you do it that makes you stand out from your peers. The, "This girl is dumb this is your problem" approach will make you look like an ass when you could've gone with the, "Here is a potential future obstacle what can I do to help" approach will help you solve your problem better and make you look good in the process.

EggyToast

How about you make a list of ways you can help her improve and work to implement them? Ask your boss if you can assume a mentorship role for this woman, and if you get sign-off, tell her that you're going to help her out and assist her in working more independently. Then, do that.

Many people learn through talking and direct communication. That doesn't make them wrong -- just potentially annoying. She's bothering you, but you're not setting up any limits on your own time. Are you in meetings when she's bugging you? Are you setting aside blocks of time where she can't talk to you?

Have you tried giving her a task and say "I will be busy for the next 2 hours, but put it together and hand it off to me after 3pm." Then, give it a scan and review it, passing your notes back to her WITHOUT making the changes. Give her deadlines and action items: "Correct this, spellcheck that, reference that, talk to operations about this other thing. And get it back to me by end-of-business today."

Give her hard deadlines and real tasks that produce deliverables. Don't ask for nebulous things like "comments," ask instead for a document listing things. If she tries to tell you, say "These sound like good things for the list. I'm really busy right now, but when you've wrapped up the list, we can review it. See you in an hour." And the deadlines will ensure she actually does the work.

If she is truly a poor worker in over her head, then worst case scenario, you're creating something documentable you can then pass along to your boss. But that only works if you've tried to help.

Drez

Sorry, I was snowed under after posting initially. She's not new - 4-5 months here now. Will reply in more depth later.

kaliyama

You should still be supportive if you need to be blunt.l, per Eggy/Inq/Sammy's recs.

Amigu

If her just remarking on stuff and chatting about things is the main thing that annoys you then maybe you should get head phones. I'm not sure what kind of environment you're working in but big head phones usually keep people from interrupting you unless it's really important...

Drez

edit: Darkwolfe is right, even though I'm being fairly general.

Rend

Is... is that tolerated in your work environment?

That sounds a lot like grounds for immediate termination to me O.o

Darkewolfe

You shouldn't be posting really negative shit about a coworker on the internet. Regardless of whether you think you'll get found out, you run a major risk and I'm sure you're violating all kinds of company policies up in this thread.

Djeet

I know you're probably just ranting, but if this person sets you off so I think you need to take a step back. Are you trying to change her or cope with her? Because you aren't going to change her and you're going to have a bad time trying.

Is she doing anything illegal (like embezzling or fraud) or might read obviously to HR as abuse? It doesn't sound like that's the situation (or at least not easily provable). And that means you need to find a way to deal with her. And I don't mean just putting up with it, but finding a strategy that minimizes your exposure to her. I've found the most effective strategy for me (if they seem to be asking me to do something) is figure out what they want and give it to them ASAP, with a smile and a thanks.

For inappropriate behavior, unless it is gross misconduct (where you have an avenue to file a complaint) just ignore it. Like that racist, or lewd, or otherwise inappropriate member of your extended family that may attend your family get-together. It's not your job to police her, and no response is better than any response to a troll.

For idle chitchat where I'm so not invested then there's the disinterested "uh-huh" while staring at the screen and typing; if they push it "hey I'm really busy on this email/report/chart, can we talk about this later?"

If it's anything related to your and her joint workflow then try to keep it to getting the task done quickly so you don't have to deal with her anymore.

There're dickheads working everywhere and after initial annoyance I take them as a challenge: they're like particularly difficult clients/bosses.

Drez

Darkewolfe is right. No sense in getting in trouble because someone else sucks.

Thank you all for the advice and responses. I'm sorry to wimp out like this and remove my recent post.

Lock me, I guess. I mostly wanted to rant.